


Love Moves Like The Sea

by flamboyo



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Beaches, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Implied Sexual Content, Internal Conflict, Laughter During Sex, Light Angst, Louis is a math major bc I said so, M/M, Math and Science Metaphors, Misunderstandings, Oblivious Louis Tomlinson, Pining, Sharing a Bed, they're both the pining idiot and the oblivious one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-29
Updated: 2020-10-06
Packaged: 2021-03-07 15:51:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 33,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26720176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flamboyo/pseuds/flamboyo
Summary: “Of course I want to stay with you, I missed you, you know? We haven't spent so much time apart since…” Harry’s smile dims a bit. “Well, we've never done it.”There's a hint of a question there, awhy. Why did you stop reaching out, why did we stop talking for months?Louis doesn’t answer. He can’t say,‘I was hoping that by ignoring you for months I would have fallen out of love with you, and it didn’t even happen’on their first day of vacation, can he?*Spending two weeks in his uncle's old house by Lee Bay beach is not Louis' ideal holiday, but sadly is the only one he can afford this summer. Spending those alone with Harry, his best friend who he has spent the last five years in love with, may make everything a little better, though. Away from everyday reality, alone somewhere that makes you forget your past and gloss over your future, maybe it's time for two friends to finally explore what they haven't said (but felt) for years.
Relationships: Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson
Comments: 101
Kudos: 285





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! I know it's both incredibly late AND ridiculously early (depending on your hemisphere) to publish a summer story, but I had a stroke of inspiration, then I couldn't write for weeks, and now I don't want to throw this away. I hope you can still enjoy this! Title is a very vague translation of a line from Punk Sentimentale (an Italian song you can listen to [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZFubiSAkVs)) ☼

_Please,_ Louis thinks while turning the key in the lock. _Please let it be no rats, no creatures, maybe not much chaos-_

"Is the lock jammed?" a voice brings him back to reality. 

"Wha-" Louis turns slightly. Harry, who's been waiting behind him, is now looking at the lock, frowning. "No, no worries, love," he turns the key the whole way and pushes the door open. "All's fine." 

"Great," Harry is now grinning like Louis is a genius, like he invented the whole concept of doors and locks, and Louis has to look away. “Let's go inside, then, I’ve been dreaming about a shower for the past hour." 

"Sure," Louis says, entering the house first, still praying they won't find any bad surprise waiting for them. "We're in disastrous conditions." 

They're so sticky and sweaty _,_ having traveled for three hours through the humid British countryside in August. Well, Harry is even worse than him, since he was the one driving and worrying about a road he has never seen, while Louis didn't do much more than keeping the GPS open on his phone and chatting with him.

They had spent three lovely hours together, even without AC (Harry’s car couldn’t afford the long trip _and_ the additional pressure on its battery) and with the windows slightly down, just an inch to let some wind come through. It gave both of them a headache, but they were too jazzed to catch up, after so many months of not properly hanging out, to care about it.

Louis leaves his luggage on the floor and invites Harry to do the same: from where they are they can only see that the house is a bit messy and a bit dusty, but all in all in perfectly fine conditions.

Louis flicks the light switch a couple of times, and only after failing in his intent both of the times he remembers he has to turn on the electric meter outside. He sighs and decides to do it after the house check: it’s still morning, they can open all windows for now.

He moves to the glass door that overlooks the garden, and doing so he bumps in some kids’ toys his cousins must have left behind. He curses under his breath, which sends Harry in a fit of laughter.

“Instead of being a dickhead, why don’t you help me?” Louis whines, pulling up the shutter.

Warm light brightens the room: it’s so much better than what Louis had thought. When he asked his old, distant uncle if he could use his house near Lee Bay beach, he expected to find a mess: he hadn’t been here in forever, and knows his cousins with their too many kids are the only ones who occasionally come here. Sure, there’s some dust and some toys here and there, but the house is clean and bright, the garden is doing fine, and for now all the locks and windows are working.

“Sure thing! What do you want me to do?”

Louis turns around, and sees Harry still grinning at him. He has been nothing but a ball of sunshine since they met that early morning, ready for their holiday. It pains Louis’ heart to know that Harry wasn’t expecting him to ask such a thing, for them to spend some quality time together. They had drifted apart, in the last months, and Louis knows it’s all his fault.

What Harry doesn’t know is that Louis did that on purpose.

“Can you go to the other rooms and open the windows? We have to clean the air. I’ll go check if the electric meter and the stove work,” he asks him, grinning back. As much as he tries to contain himself, as much as he had deprived himself of his presence during these last months, Harry is still his best friend.

Even platonically, there’s no one he loves more.

“On a mission,” Harry says, seriously despite the smile, hands behind his back.

He turns around and disappears in the small corridor that leads to the kitchen, leaving Louis with a smudge _what am I doing_ feeling.

“If you see anything weird call me!” he remembers to shout after him, and goes outside to turn the power on.

When Louis was making his holiday plan, in May, he had realized he couldn’t afford to go anywhere that summer. He had made too many expenses during the winter, and as necessary as those were, he was left with little cash for a proper holiday.

Refusing to spend all his time off work in London, especially during the hottest months of the year, he had crafted a well-thought plan of _being invited to various places by various people_ for a couple of weeks _,_ that all in all worked perfectly.

He had an additional two weeks after that, and the only place he could afford visiting was his uncle’s house by the sea. And despite everything, despite all the talks he had to have with himself, of course he thought about Harry first, when thinking which friend to invite here: he missed him. 

Truth is, they never had spent so much time apart: since they’ve met, five years ago, they have lived in each others’ pockets. It wasn't normal for them to barely see each other for such a long time. 

Louis walks quickly through the sunny garden: there are some patches where the grass is dry and discolored, but he figures that with some daily watering and maybe some mowing he could bring it back to life. The electric meter is easy to find and to turn on: after doing so, he comes back to the house, enjoying how cool the air feels inside.

“You undersold this house,” Harry informs him when he comes back in. “You went on and on about how old and abandoned this was, but this is cute.”

Harry has opened all the windows, and he’s bathing in the summer, warm light: he had taken a seat in the kitchen, resting his back on the pale yellow tiles Louis had seen every summer of his childhood, before he declared himself too old to come here. Harry's skin is sun-kissed already, in this morning of early August, and his curls are pushed back on his forehead, damp with sweat. His green eyes sparkle with happiness and peace, and Louis wonders how it would feel to kiss him on his forehead.

 _Sweaty, probably,_ his brain supplies him. _You should go for the lips instead._

“I don’t know mate, haven’t come here in years,” is all he says back, turning his back to him. He starts checking if the gas works, trying not to think about how seeing him on and off for so long just worsened his feelings for him. “Had no idea what to expect.”

“It’s cute,” Harry says again, slowly, and there’s no need. “I was thinking about how it would be to live here.”

“Here?” Louis wonders, surprised. The gas is connected, and when he tries to light up a stove it works instantly. “Ah-ah!” he exclaims, satisfied, turning it off again. “We can have coffee, later.” _Dinner, too,_ he thinks. _Shit, we’ll have to go grocery shopping._

“It would be so nice,” Harry continues, unconcerned about what an amazing victory it is to have working burners. “To be just here, with someone,” he adds, still slowly, like he’s daydreaming.

“It would be boring,” Louis corrects him without turning to look at him.

He can’t think about living here with Harry, with a garden to look after and the sea so close to them, so far away from everybody. _Just the two of them_ , like they used to say when they first met and hit off immediately, when Louis still thought his feelings were reciprocated.

Especially because he knows Harry isn’t thinking about living here with him.

“Come on,” he continues, without giving Harry the time to protest. He turns around, and finds Harry still smiling at him, posture relaxed. He is resting his head on the wall, with his chin up and his Hawaiian-dad shirt already open, pooling in his lap; he looks like a dream. Louis smiles back, unable to fight the warmth he feels in his chest every time he looks at him. “We should go check out the bedrooms upstairs.”

Harry pouts. "Can't we chill a bit? I'm tired." 

Louis of some months ago, of their half-decade together would mess up his hair, poke his cheeks, bother him in some physical way. 

Louis of the present just rolls his eyes and says: "Come on, you lazy ass. Let's get the boring stuff out of the way." 

“Okay," Harry accepts, still smiling. "But we have to check out the showers, too,” he reminds him, standing up.

“You just said that-”

“I know, but I really have to. I feel so gross,” he says, with an exaggerated disgusted grimace on.

 _You’re not that bad,_ Louis almost says. Instead, he just nods and leads the way to the staircase, cleaning the way from the toys they encounter.

Upstairs is even cleaner: no signs of toys or random extra chairs in sight, just a little dust here and there. Louis goes to open the bathroom’s window first, pointing out the shower to a very satisfied Harry.

“Okay, apart from that, there are two bedrooms here, and both of them have everything-”

“Everything?”

“Yeah, as in, the door to the balcony, and like, a bed.”

“A bed? In the _bedroom?_ That's incredible. Absurd,” he giggles, and Louis shoves him, gently. 

“Shush, I’m just saying. I’d reckon I’ll get this one,” he points to the one on their left. “And you’ll go to the other one, okay?”

Harry stops giggling all of a sudden, a confused look draws on his features.

“I thought we were gonna sleep together?” he asks, puzzled. 

Louis looks at him, mimicking his expression and the confusion behind that. 

"... Why would you think that, there’s no need," he comments, turning to look at the rooms again.

He won't cave in. He knows they used to do stuff like that, but he wants that period to be over. He can't get into that again, they can't act as they have for years. Louis has decided he has to move on, and he's been trying to do so for months. 

"Yeah! Yeah, I mean…" Harry is quick to agree. He seems a little flushed, but Louis is sure it's just the hot air that was trapped upstairs. "It was just to... You know, not washing too many sheets and make a mess in both of the rooms-" 

"There’s a washing machine downstairs," Louis interrupts his rambling. "For sure that won't be a problem."

"Oh! Okay, it’s just…" he's smiling again, but it would take an idiot to think that's genuine. "I don’t know, I thought it was gonna be easier, but okay! Sure," he smiles again, cheerful, but some of his disappointment is still present. 

Louis doesn't want to think about why that is there, because he won't get anything good out of it.

He's set on that: they have to sleep in separate bedrooms. They haven't seen each other in a while, and it would be weird, full stop. No matter that for them it used to be normal. 

Louis had realized he had to put a distance between them if he wanted to stay sane, because he wasn’t falling out of love anytime soon. He had tried, he had dated different people, he had wished and hoped, and it just never happened.

They were glued to each other, in a way that used to feel too much, too intimate to be _only friends_. People always speculated, but Harry had always been so quick to assure anyone wondering that there wasn't _anything_ between them, that he was _happily single if that was what you were wondering?_ He used to add, with a smirk, the one that made him look like an asshole, the one for which Louis always made fun of him.

But then, after that, they would spend every waking moment together, to then go sleep tangled in each other's arms, sharing sweaters and concert tickets, weekend trips and events in the city. And it would only contribute to Louis' confusion, because no matter how much it felt like he was Harry's boyfriend, he wasn't. Harry had been clear about it, years ago. 

Louis can't think about that day when he realized nothing was ever going to happen, not without feeling the humiliation washing over him, still. He read it wrong, and that was it.

So, honestly, Louis couldn't cope with the mixed signals anymore. He had broken his own heart by having too much hope too many times, and he grew tired of it. 

If all the math he had studied in the last half-decade and all the coding he's been doing for work has taught him, is that if after debugging a program and re-build the coding lines from scratch time and time again leads to nothing, the road is probably the wrong one. And if you're still set in arriving where you want to, maybe you should consider that the goal is the wrong one.

Maybe some best friends behave like they used to, and maybe it works for them, but maybe those friends aren't in love with their friend like he has been with Harry.

So now, tired because of the journey and still sweaty, he wants to have something simple and clear, something with clear boundaries. He knows they would have slept together, some years ago, but right now, Louis is too tired of this story.

He enters one of the rooms and turns the light on. Everything looks alright at first glance, apart from the pink crucifix hanging over the double bed. Louis squints at it: Jesus on it has straw-yellow hair. 

He goes to open the glass door that goes out to the balcony.

"See?" he asks, pointing out to the balcony as if Harry would already know the planning of the house. "The other room overlooks the same balcony, so it’s not like we’re distant or anything." 

"I know, I know, it’s just that we came here together to spend the holiday together, you know?" 

"Aw," Louis mocks him gently. "We're gonna spend a lot of time together anyway. There's nothing to do here, so…" he lingers, moving across the room to go check the other one. 

"Why are you moving so quickly," Harry mutters behind him, trying to keep up with him. "Aren't you tired?"

"Sure, but I want to finish doing this before going to the beach, you know?" he flicks the light on in the second room. "Anyway, the other room is this one." Is similar to the other, same planning with the cupboards and another double bed; this one has no crucifix, though. "Wait, I’ll go open the window."

He walks over the glass door and pulls the shutter up. Nothing happens. 

_Oh fuck._ The shutter hasn’t moved an inch, and it looks positively stuck. _Should I call my uncle about this?_

He does it again, firmer this time. Still nothing. 

"Need a hand?" in a second Harry is next to him, furrowed brow and bottom lip between his teeth. He's looking at the shutter critically, like he could understand what is happening just by analyzing the heavy piece of plastic in front of them. 

"No, wait," he doesn't want to give the shutter and his hopes up, not yet. "This house is too old, I need to be delicate or I could break something." 

Truth to his words, he pulls again, gentler. Still nothing. 

"Okay but still, let me try?" his hand brushes delicately on Louis' one, who retracts it like he's getting burnt. His orange nail polish looks almost neon in the shadows of the small room. Harry pulls the shutter one, two times, getting firmer after each stroke. "Lou, this is already broken. It doesn’t open at all." 

Harry turns to him, apologetic, like it could be his fault if his uncle's old house is in these conditions. Louis wasn't that wrong when he said this house was half abandoned, was he? 

Harry's expression quickly changes to something a lot slier, once he realizes what is going to happen now. Louis gets it a beat later.

 _Oh shit. Oh no, please, no_ , Louis thinks, to absolutely no use. 

"Listen…" Harry starts, slowly, already knowing he's winning the argument. If it was anyone else in the world, Louis would have felt so annoyed. But he's Harry, and he has to huff a smile, even despite everything. "You can’t breath in this room," he starts, simply. 

Louis snorts, knowing he has already lost this. "Yeah, I know that, I can feel that," he whines. "The window doesn’t open and it’s August. _Plus,_ we’re on the first floor." 

"Well… too bad, I think it would make sense for both of us to sleep in the other one" he’s full-on smiling now, with both his dimples out, like he just won something. 

"Yeah, but-" 

"Oh come on! Where is the problem?" Harry is still grinning, but his question is genuine. 

Well, Louis can’t get into that, because he’s sweaty and bothered and tired, and the only thing he wants is having a swim in the sea. He thinks quickly about it, but there’s no other option: it’s impossible to even have a conversation here, let alone sleep for hours.

And yeah, they’re still best friends, they can still do things like this. It’s not Harry's fault if he’s in love with him.

"Okay, yeah, you’re right, I was just messing with you." To prove this, he gets closer to Harry and pokes him in his naked ribs, making him squeal and reach for his hand. "Let’s go there, then. We can bring the luggage upstairs." 

They leave all their stuff in the spare room, to have more space, and then go sit on their double bed.

Louis lays down immediately, knackered, eyes on the ceiling. From what he can hear Harry is fighting with his clothes, a tangle of various objects and textures hitting the floor. He has never been good at keeping his body to himself. Louis doesn’t turn to him, just hears his footsteps depart from him and room to resort to the shower.

Louis remains there, unmoving, the air around him too hot to let him do anything more than breathing. Hearing the shower going on and on, he just wonders how he will cope with living with his best friend while alone by the sea, when they will be half-naked and alone all the time.

Minutes pass and the water doesn't stop flowing.

“Have you drowned in there?” He calls.

“I’m an Aquarius,” a singsonging voice comes amid the water noises. “I like being in the water.”

Okay, Harry is still Harry. Good to know.

Louis sighs, standing up from the bed, and goes washing his face and hands in the bathroom downstairs. Coming back up, he studies the bed situation for a second: the mattress is big enough for the two of them, and it’s so damn hot, there won’t be any problems or incidents. 

Everything will be alright, they’ll spend two weeks in the sun and they’ll come back, as friends as they were before. He can do this.

While he’s still thinking about this, Harry opens the bathroom’s door, awkwardly dragging his feet over a small carpet he must have found somewhere.

He’s soaked, with his long hair dripping droplets on his neck and chest, just in his boxers (that are _dampened_ , so it’s not like they’re doing a great job at masking what is underneath), all his core muscles tense for keeping the carpet under his feet.

Louis gives him his back instantly. “Hey?” he calls, his voice not as steady as he would have wanted.

“Sorry! I know I’m making a mess, but I forgot my towel!” more shifting happens, until Harry disappears in the other room. “I’ll clean after myself, give me a mo’!”

“Don’t worry about that,” Louis remembers to say, too quietly for Harry to have heard him.

 _Fuck_ , he thinks, looking at straw-hair Jesus. _These will be two long, hard weeks._

~*~

It was easy to tide everything up, have lunch, and go to the beach.

It was a little less easy to wake Harry up from his nap without caressing his curls too much, to put sunscreen on his tan shoulders and to not admire him in his tiny and bright swimsuit for too long. 

They’re sitting down under their parasol, enjoying the warmth and the wind, always chatting. They haven’t stopped a second since they arrived here, somehow continuing talking and bantering even in the salty, rough sea.

The seawater is cold, jade-like: the soft breeze they could feel in the house was a strong wind here on the coast, and the waves made it impossible for them to tell how deep it was. Their bath wasn’t long, the waves were too strong and the currents too dangerous for them. The sea keeps moving, relentless, like an immense animal that can’t know any peace.

They had sat down to enjoy the continued motion of it, drying up and brushing the salt off their bodies.

But now Harry is not looking at the sea with Louis anymore, he’s looking at a group of guys playing volleyball next to them. Their attempts are funny to watch, Louis has to admit: it’s too windy to have a proper game, and they’re all laughing and chatting more than exchanging passings.

Louis can’t tell how many are there, but the three boys among the group are all tall, tan and loud. Just like Harry likes them.

“Do you want to go to them?”

“Uh?”

Louis points at them with his chin, his pose slouched. His palms are resting behind him, his whole body exposed to the sun. “You're looking at them?”

“Oh.” Harry looks at them again, to then turn on his back, shifting closer to Louis. His eyes travel from the curve of Louis’ shoulder down to his hips, before blinking at looking at him in the eyes. “Nah, I don't care.”

“You sure?” Louis looks at the group again. They're all bantering, their bond looking tight, but they also look friendly. Louis is sure that Harry, as charming as he is, would befriend them in a beat. Maybe just to play some volleyball together, but still. “Not even for some volleyball?”

Harry smiles at him, squinting his eyes in the sun. “Nah, Lou. I'm with you. Don't care about others.”

“Oh,” _oh?_ “I- okay.”

Harry laughs, loud and open.

“Come on! Of course I want to stay with you, I missed you, you know? We haven't spent so much time apart since…” his smile dims a bit. “Well, we've never done it.”

There's a hint of a question there, a _why_.

A _why did you stop reaching to me_ , _why did we stop hanging out_ , _why does this feel a bit awkward when we know each other better than anyone else_.

Louis is the only one who can give him an answer, and he won’t do it. “... Yeah,” he just says.

“I'd rather stay with you,” Harry repeats, sincere like he always is.

“You've become even cheesier, you know?” Louis nudges him with his foot. “Sooo corny.”

“Shut up, you.” To underline that, Harry throws a handful of sand at him.

Louis yelps, startled, and shakes it off the best he can.

“Harry, what the-” Harry is laughing like a maniac again. “What are you, twelve?” But Louis is laughing, too. He had missed this too much.

“Maybe! Maybe I am.” He sits with his legs crossed, his knee brushing Louis’ elbow. “When I'll get bored of you, I'll go to them.”

“You'd _never_ -”

“No?” Harry raises his eyebrows, and Louis can see the dry salt trapped in there. His curls are voluminous, puffed up by the seawater, and Louis wonders how it would be to touch them. How rough they could feel under his hands. “You go and try to talk about algorithms one more time-”

“Oi, you _love_ when I talk about algorithms-”

“Yeah. Yeah, I do.”

There’s no playful tone in his voice anymore. He’s smiling, open and relaxed, his eyes glimmering of trust and affection.

He’s so honest. He always has been.

Louis stops for a second, their skin brushing again, soft, warm. It lasts just a second before his brain goes _just kiss him, come on,_ _it won’t be like that night, it’s gonna last this time,_ like every time he looks at him for too long.

“Whatever,” he huffs, trying to sound like he’s joking like before. He stands up, fixing his still damp swimsuit. “I'm gonna go for another swim. It's too hot, innit? Wanna come?”

“Sure,” Harry is still grinning, and stands up to follow him. He doesn’t turn to look at the group playing volleyball not even once for the rest of the afternoon.

~*~

Weirdly enough it was quite difficult to go grocery shopping together.

It was too domestic to choose everything together, thinking about their food, planning their meals, both already knowing what the other liked best, both already knowing that Harry was going to be the one cooking for them most of the time.

But it was cute, and Louis loved that. He's getting used again to be Harry's friend, first and foremost: they commented on every item they saw, laughing like maniacs in that tiny, half-empty supermarket.

He had a moment, after Harry had reached for a box of cereal with a sinister bunny-like mascot on it and said _‘I’m feeling threatened’,_ where he pressed his nose against Harry's shoulder, laughing loudly, just like he used to.

He was starting to act less awkward and starting to remember how it was to be Harry’s friend. When the cashier rang them up, asking _'together?'_ , Louis did nothing embarrassing, just nodded and paid. 

They went to sleep quite early that night, as tired as they were.

They went to bed still chatting, and continued doing so even after they turned off the lights, until they decided to try and sleep, to not mess too much with their sleeping patterns. The next day they are going to wake up late anyway: they have so many days together, they deserve a bit of rest.

So now, in the complete silence of the room, interrupted only by the hushed roaring of the distant sea, Louis is lying still, in his half of the bed.

His eyes are closed, fetching the rest his limbs so much desire, but the silence doesn’t last long. Harry whispers, closer to him than what Louis thought he was:

“Why are you over there?”

Louis’ breath itches.

So many times they had slept much more closely than this, cuddling without a care in the world, but it’s still the same thing: Louis doesn’t want them to do those things again, but he doesn’t have the words to explain it to Harry. It would be too obvious, and he has no will to say any of that the first day of their holiday.

He knows it’s gonna hurt him to have a cuddle and then have to forget about it again. But this whole situation he has created it’s hurting their friendship already, when Louis had decided to distance himself to not hurt Harry in the first place.

And after a single day they had together he’s already not that sure of any of the rules he had placed over himself.

“I don’t know… it’s a bit hot innit?” he tries.

(The sun has set, the wind has kept blowing for the entire evening, so no, it’s not hot at all).

“Hot? What?” Harry is smiling. “Nah, come here, Lou.”

Louis moves to his right just a bit, but as soon as he does that Harry closes the distance between them and puts his head on his chest, hugging him with his face pressed on Louis’ neck.

“G’night Lou,” he whispers.

Louis gets tense for a second. His nose is lost in Harry’s curls, and he smells of his floral shampoo, with just a tiny note of saltiness. His body is warm, heavy, and Louis could draw it from memory. There’s nothing as comforting as this.

He gets relaxed, too, and hugs him back with the left side of his body, sliding his legs between Harry’s.

 _Do whatever you want, but this will break your heart, later,_ his brain reminds him.

“G’night, love,” is all he whispers back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hiiii so, I have the whole fic ready, and it's going to be 5 chapters and around 30k. I'm gonna post a chapter every two days, more or less (if you wanna be sure to not miss an update you can subscribe to this story or to my account if you want to!) thank you for reading, you can find my tumblr [ here](https://chrysopon.tumblr.com/)!
> 
> Kudos and feedback are always hella appreciated, I'll see you soon ♡


	2. Chapter 2

It’s been only three days and Louis is already getting mad.

Everything is peachy, everything is perfect, except that it feels like they are married.

They do everything together: they wake up in the same bed, have a coffee while slouching on the pillows, then go downstairs to have a proper breakfast and walk to a semi-desert beach where they can do whatever they want (which is mostly drawing in the sand, reading old books, screaming and acting like children).

They go back to their house when the sun is too hot, Harry cooks, Louis looks after the garden, and they’re always chatting, always hugging, always expressing affection in a way or another.

Harry cooks for both of them almost every day, experimenting with some new recipes, even baking when he feels like to. He made Louis’ favorite scones, the blueberry and lemon ones, even though _he_ doesn’t like them that much, and just because Louis had said, pretty offhandedly, that he didn’t have some good ones in a while.

And in this Louis is getting a bit too used to coming behind him and hugging him, his head resting on Harry's back, his arms around his middle, asking what the chef is ready to serve.

They’re always together, every minute of every day, with a never-ending flow of topics to talk about because they missed each other too damn much and they have so much to cover. And in this, and they’re always half-naked, dripping water everywhere, covered in salt, sun-kissed, happy, relaxed.

Louis still sees that shadow in Harry's eyes sometimes, that _what happened, did we have an argument? Did we stop being friends? Why are we together again, after months of silence?_ but he doesn’t want to ruin how good they feel these days, and he never brings it up. Harry doesn’t, either.

There aren’t too many people yet: the beach where they usually go is almost empty, still. More people will come in their second week here, Louis knows that, so they’re taking advantage of it, knowing they can do whatever they want.

The little houses scattered near them are almost all empty, too, and they’re celebrating this solitude they have by watching movies way too loudly in the evenings, piling up on the old couch they have downstairs.

Every day they walk down the same path, appreciating this beautiful and sweet routine they’ve created, where they comment on other people’s gardens and houses, trying to imagine their lives and what kind of person they may be based on what outdoor furniture they’ve chosen.

It’s peachy, is perfect, but Louis is ready to snap. It's too much. _This very_ morning has already been too much. 

Harry had woken up before him, untangled himself from Louis’ arms and went downstairs. Louis was still too sleepy to mind all of that, sure it was too early in the morning to wake up. He knew Harry liked his quiet and his moments of peace, too, so more reason to let him be and continue sleeping.

His own quiet didn’t last long though, because not long after Louis heard some footsteps softly going upstairs, and then, even softer, the door of their room opened.

“Lou,” a murmur joined the turtledoves’ coos. “Good morning.”

Louis turned around, to give Harry his back, and hid his face in Harry’s pillow.

He had heard Harry snorting, then the mattress dipping where Louis’ torso was.

“Come on, I brought you coffee. And the last scone,” he had added, soft like before, but with a hint of a smile in his tone now.

Louis peeked above his shoulder, eyes still half-closed. Harry was wearing his best smile and had a steaming mug in one hand, and a plate in the other. He must have searched for two coordinated pieces, because Louis didn’t recognize the pattern of them.

Louis had mumbled something intelligible under his breath, then sat up with his back leaning on the wall, still rubbing his eyes. And then, well.

Then Harry got closer to him, pressing the still hot cup of black coffee in Louis’ right hand, and in the same moment he placed a kiss on his left cheek. Louis, in his sleepy stupor, had looked at him for an instant and then leaned closer, to give him back a peck on the lips.

Thankfully his brain made the right connection and at the last second he turned his head just enough to not _kiss him_ , but, still.

He still got lost in a fantasy where the birds sing when you wake up, where the air is warm and the days are long and bright, where you can always listen to the comforting rumble of the sea. Where Harry bakes scones just for him, where he brings him breakfast in bed, where he can kiss him when he wants to.

“Thank you, H,” he had whispered back, trying to not let the heaviness on his chest show, and drowned half of his cup in the first sip.

He didn’t raise his head for a few minutes after that, confused and annoyed with himself, so Harry had started telling him about a gray cat that sometimes crosses their garden, about some old lady at the end of the road who does all her gardening in the first hours of the day, when the sun is not hot yet.

His voice was soft, respectful of the early hour, and when Louis met his eyes again to make a comment about a dog in one of the houses next to them who never stops barking, he had to blink twice to refocus his brain.

It’s just that the sunrise light was filling the room with a rose-colored glow and warmth, and Harry was sitting with his legs crossed in front of him, so close their knees were on top of each other. The turtledoves were the only ones awake with them, and the rumbling of the sea was distant, but always present. Their coffees were still steaming hot between them, and Harry was quiet, waiting for Louis to finish his sentence.

Louis had just stared at him for a second or two, his thoughts mixed up. In the soft light, Harry's eyes looked like pools of honey. Harry had nodded for him to continue, and took his hand to study: he was warm. After that, Louis had needed another second to remember his words, and some minutes to go back to planet Earth.

So, seriously, he doesn't know how much more he can go on like this. He knows Harry is genuine and so lovely, and knows he wouldn't do anything with malicious interns, especially not towards Louis, but Louis' poor heart is doing too many backflips in his chest lately.

When they’re together they detach themselves from reality and go exist somewhere where there are only the two of them. In those moments Louis forgets their pasts, and can’t see beyond what they’re doing and saying.

In those moments Louis wonders if anything would change if he dared to ask for a kiss. What is a kiss on the lips compared to everything they’re doing? What is a kiss to half a decade spent like this?

It never last, though, because they still live connected with an entire reality, and when Harry is talking about some friend Louis doesn’t know that well, when he answers the phone to talk with some random relative, when Harry talks about his last year of his master’s degree and Louis about his software job, everything starts to crack.

Because everything is too warm, too soft, too lovely. And it's not real. 

And in those moments, when the rest of the world interacts with them, when they greet some neighbour or someone on the beach arranges their parasol too near them, that Louis understands what an immense difference a kiss on the lips would make.

~*~

It’s early morning and as far as Louis can see, they’re the only ones who are already on the beach. The strong wind of some days ago has ceased, and now the days are long, bright and muggy. The sea, consequently, has calmed down a lot, letting them spend so much more time in the water.

Both have started to gain even a deeper color on their shoulders and cheeks, and right now Louis is having fun pressing his fingers on Harry’s back and watching his fingerprint making a white drop on his skin, to then regain his tan color back.

He has been doing that a couple of times now, but Harry is paying less and less attention to him: he’s lying under the parasol, half sleeping, with an old copy of a Jane Austin book Louis has never heard of open on his lap.

Louis drops his hand, bored, thinking of what he could do next. He doesn’t want to swim alone, not for long, and the water is still too cold.

Harry’s hand finds his, and gives it a squeeze. They remain like that, hand in hand, Harry drifting in the dreamland and Louis sitting on the sand, staring at their intertwined fingers, still.

“Hey, I'm going for a walk,” he announces out of the blue, and stands up.

Harry’s hand flops back to his stomach. “Do you want me to come with you,” he mumbles, eyes still closed.

Louis smiles down at him. “Nah, don’t worry.”

He picks his phone and starts walking quickly, to get as far from Harry as possible, but after a couple of seconds he realizes how stupid that is: he turns around and yep, Harry is sleeping.

Louis arrives at the shore, entering the freezing water slowly. It’s crystal clean, today, deep blue and endless. The horizon is winking at him, inviting him to drop his phone and try to catch it. Louis shakes his head and turns slightly to start walking along the shore, his feet still in the cold morning water.

His fingers find Zayn’s contact on their own, his mind reeling. He throws a glance in Harry’s direction: he’s lying on his side now, just like he does when he naps in the afternoon.

“Can I vent a little bit?” he asks his friend, once they’re done with the pleasantries.

Zayn laughs, softly, like he’s trying to contain himself. Just then Louis remembers that it's morning, and maybe he and Liam were still sleeping. There's no chance in hell Zayn would have woken up for a phone call, one by _him_ , so at least Louis is sure he didn't wake his friend up. 

"Wow, you resisted what, four days? Good for you, mate." 

"Oi-" 

"What you wanna vent about?" he goes on. "How dreamy his eyes are? Or how shitty is it to look at him flirting with other people? Those tend to be the topics, with you." 

Well. He's not wrong, but does he have to put it that way? 

"I'm hanging up," he whines. 

"Mmmh," Zayn drags out, stretching. "Suit yourself mate, you're the one who called me." he sounds sleepy, but happy. 

"Zee, I- okay, sorry," he cuts himself off, sighing. It's only early morning, and he knows he had talked his ears off too many times, always about the same topics. Zayn is a saint to not have hung up on him yet. "Well, how are you? How's Li? You're still in Edinburgh?" 

Louis hears him smiling down the line.

"Li's sleeping. I'm great, and nope, we arrived in Glasgow yesterday. I want to visit the _GoMA_. You two could come here, next summer," he jokes, still softly, and now Louis knows that's because he doesn't want to wake Liam up. 

"I don't think I could bear another trip," Louis says, sincere. "Or another day here." 

"That bad?" Zayn sounds surprised, and it frustrates Louis. 

"I don't know bro, I don't-" he kicks the sand, feeling tired all of a sudden. He watches the wet sand splutter not far away from his foot, and does it again. It gives him a hint of satisfaction. "I missed him too much, thought about him too much," he continues, honest and raw. "It got even worse."

" _Worse?_ " Zayn stops whatever he was doing to give him his complete attention. "There was no room for it to get _worse_." 

“Apparently there was,” he whines, and he _hates_ it. It’s not fair, on both of them. Harry deserves a best friend who doesn’t dream about their marriage, and Louis deserves to have a less confusing friendship. “I- Zee, it feels like we're married. We do everything together. We go to the beach and then we cook and then we cuddle and have dinner together, watch a movie and cuddle again,” he says, all in the same breath. “Like-” he stops for a second, and then tells him about their bed situation, about how he tried to avoid it and still ended up sleeping in the same bed, cuddling all night long.

Zayn, on his behalf, just laughs loudly in his ear. “And that's not your dream? Bro, you’re living the _life_. You snatched him from reality and now he’s all yours, and all over you. And you aren’t happy with that?”

Louis kicks the sand again, out of frustration. “No, because none of this is real? He's my best friend and I'm so grateful I have him but… We're friends, and I know that,” he hates how sometimes the word _friends_ sound bitter to his ears, because in reality he is so damn happy he got to know someone as incredible as Harry is, and he would choose that over his pining ever day of his life. “I know he thinks about us as friends. And it hurts more than it used to,” he adds in a whisper.

“More? Has he got with someone already?” Zayn wonders, curious and ready for the gossip, and it makes Louis’ blood boil.

“Oi, don't talk about him like that-”

He can hear Zayn rolling his eyes from here. “Bro, come on-”

“No, I'm serious. Don't do that,” he repeats, less biting.

It’s all his own fault, to be fair: when he had understood nothing was ever going to happen, he had a couple of rough nights with too much alcohol and bitterness involved, and he made too many comments about how often Harry slept around with random guys. Well, Harry used to do that often, but it’s not like Louis was a celibate during his Uni years, and still, Louis shouldn’t have gone behind his best friend’s back like that. Louis did that only a couple of times, and years ago, but he planted the idea in his other friends’ mind, and since then he has to bear the consequences of it.

“He didn't, don’t say that,” he repeats. _Anyway, there aren't many people here_ , he almost adds, before realizing how counterproductive that would be. “I don't know, but it feels so real? It feels like we're together,” he continues down his original path. “More than it used to feel, and it _hurts_. I was hoping to get over him, that's why I stopped reaching to him, but I feel like I made things worse for both of us, because we missed each other and we're both so clingy now-”

“ _Worse_ than you used to be-” Zayn really can’t get behind this point, it seems, and Louis can’t blame him.

“Again, yes.” He turns around to look at Harry again, and realizes he got too distant to do that. He turns around and starts walking back, the sun now reflecting in the water in front of him. “Zee, it's a coward move to take a bus and go back to London?”

Zayn snorts, but after a second of silence he got that that was a real question. “And leave him there? In your uncle's house?” he’s starting to comprehend how much Louis is going out of his mind here. “With the keys or without? Gonna lock him inside or what?” he teases him.

“I don't know, man!” he huffs. “I don't know anything anymore. Confused as fuck, that’s what I am.”

“Mmmh,” that’s all Zayn says back.

Going by the faint noises he hears, Louis would say he’s drinking coffee, probably his second or third cup of the day. When they were in Uni together they would always make Liam way too worried about their caffeine habits. In his eyes, they were addicted; in Louis and Zayn’s ones, though, they were a Math and an Architecture major, thriving on their stereotypes, pulling all-nighters and straight A’s like it was nothing.

“You're still sure he doesn't like you back, yeah?” Zayn wonders, after a pause, and it takes Louis a couple of seconds to grasp that _yeah_ , that question was for him.

“Dude.” He almost feels hurt. “Of course. Did you forget what happened?”

“You mean at Li’s party-”

 _“Yeah,”_ he interrupts him, teeth gritted. He doesn’t need a recap of that night, not now and not ever. He stops walking and starts digging a hole in the wet sand with his right foot.

“Mate… It's been years.”

“Yeah, and he never spoke of it again,” he says, bitter, always so bitter.

“But neither did you,” Zayn tries to rationalize.

“Whatever,” he grunts, hating this topic from the bottom of his heart. “How many stories did he had in the meantime? How many boyfriends?” he spits out, continuing his furious digging.

“You talk as if you didn't date Matt for nearly two years-”

“Bro,” he interrupts him, sighing. “You know how things were between us, come on.”

He and Matt weren’t exactly boyfriends, no matter how the world used to see them.

Sure, they used words like _boyfriends_ and _dates_ and they met each other’s families and went on holidays together, but to be frank they never had any type of connection between them. Not romantical, not emotional. They were two nerds who met at an Advanced Calculus course, and Louis liked him enough to allow himself to dream about falling in love with someone else. Sure, they were friends and genuinely enjoyed the other’s presence, but that was it.

It never worked, and he got stuck in a relationship that looked so much more like a friend with benefits type of thing, except one where the rest of the world thought they were head over heels for each other.

He spent nearly two years with someone he didn’t love, and when they both realized it was never going to happen they called it off, no bad sentiments between them. Louis never spoke to him again, and that was it.

Useless, depressing, tiring.

“I know, yeah,” Zayn informs him he’s still on the phone with him. “And I know that just as much as you don't know how things were between all those guys and Harry. And listen, for sure none of them had anything similar with what you have with him. I know you know that, too.”

Louis looks down at his hole in the sand: it’s filling up with seawater, and he can’t see how deep it was. He remembers that when he was little sometimes he’d find little red worms under the sand. He wonders if they still live there.

He looks back at Harry: he’s near again, and can see how he’s still sleeping on one side. He doesn’t have a pillow and the sand is full of bumps, and he already knows that Harry is going to wake up pouting about his back. Louis will offer him a massage, like he always does, even if they both know he’s not that great with them.

He tried to learn how to do them especially for him: he never said that, but he’s sure Harry knows it, after all the years they’ve spent together.

“I just-” he pauses to sigh, deeply. “I’m a bit tired of this,” he continues, honest. “Bit tired of knowing it’s never going to happen, and then feeling like I'm a shit friend for even hoping about it. He’s my best friend, with you of course,” he rushes to add, “And I’d rather have this than lose him again. But all of this now… it’s confusing me. It’s confusing me too much.” 

“Mmmh,” Zayn agrees with him. “I know you don’t like to go down that path, but Lou, you… You never really thought about what could happen if it was mutual.”

“Because it _isn’t_ ,” Louis repeats, less biting this time around. He doesn’t understand why Zayn is doing this to him.

“But how can you be this sure?” Zayn continues, like he hasn’t heard what Louis just said. Like he doesn’t know _what happened._ “You tried to ignore him for months, and I’ve told you, he asked about you every day. About how you were doing, if you liked your new job, if Li and I were seeing you or not, and… All the things you’re saying are making you mad? He’s doing those with you. He's doing those _to_ you,” he underlines, voice steady. He sounds like he doesn’t care anymore if Liam wakes up or not, and Louis loves him _so_ much. “He's the one who insisted on sleeping together, that brought you breakfast in bed, that sleeps all over you. He's the one, not the opposite.” Louis bites his bottom lip to not interrupt him. Why is he saying all of this? None of this matters. “You’re not doing anything like that. I know that what there’s between you two is… complicated, but why would you think it’s unrequited?”

Somehow, Louis smiles. It’s a sour and sarcastic one, though.

“Because he fucked a random guy three days after I told him I loved him, bro,” he grits out, words filled with contempt. He hates to remember those days, and wishes Zayn wouldn’t make him do that at 9 am and while on holiday. “And because he got together with that dude a week after that.” He kicks the sand again, but it doesn’t feel good anymore. “That’s why.” _And you know all of this,_ he could add, but he’s not in the mood to pick up a fight, especially not one with a friend who’s been listening to him complaining for the past twenty minutes.

The silence between them stretches out.

Since Louis is feeling a bit like a child he decides to go full out with it and sits down, tracing random lines and patterns on the sand. He hears Zayn finishing his coffee and placing his cup down. Louis knows he’s not going to apologize, but he doesn’t have much to add to the conversation right now, so he stays silent. He throws a glance at Harry and sees he’s still sleeping: the sun is going to hit him in the next few minutes, and Louis will have to move the parasol for him. It fills his heart with warmth.

“I’m just saying, I… Okay, I don’t wanna upset you,” Zayn starts again. “My point was, he’s acting like this with you, too. You’re not going crazy, you’re not imagining things. He’s with you for every step of the way. So what I’m saying is… you’ve got some days together. Just… look at him. Look at how he acts with you, I guess,” he concludes, a bit clumsy.

His words were a bit tentative, but Louis gets from where those came from, it’s just… It’s just that it’s gonna kill him, to have hope again.

He remains in silence for another second, trying to find some better, less depressing words to say that, but before he can add anything he hears some faint noises down the line: a door gets opened, some mumbles.

“Oi, umh, Li has woken up,” Zayn goes back to whispering, his attention clearly somewhere else.

Louis smiles. His voice got so much softer.

“Go to your man, I'll hear from you later.”

“No, wait- are you sure you wanna go like this? I don't feel like you're done.”

It’s clear how Zayn doesn’t want to hang up if Louis is still upset, but he would much rather do that and go say good morning to his boyfriend. And the thought alone is more than enough for Louis.

“Don't worry about me. It’s- listen, it's been years,” he says with an exasperated snort. “I'll cope, somehow. It's okay.” He smiles again, thinking about how his two best friends got to fall in love with each other, and now they’re spending their summer together traveling and visiting art museums. The dream, really. “Give Li a kiss on my behalf, okay?”

“You're _not_ kissing him again-”

Louis lets out an honest laugh. “Bye Zee, love you.”

“Love you too. Don't break your heart too much, bro.”

Louis says _bye_ again and hangs up, smiling bitterly. _Too late for that._

He looks back at Harry again. He’s sitting up, now, legs folded up to his chest and his elbow resting on his knees, looking at the sea. From here Louis can’t see them, but he knows his eyes get even clearer when they’re by the beach, even dreamier. Harry has always been a bit lost in his daydreams, and Louis, across the years, has learned to guide him around, to call him back to reality when needed.

Right now, though, he just looks at him. They’re both sitting down, facing the calm waves that come and go, but never truly stop. The sound gets mixed with the wind and the seagulls, and Louis feels so much peace in his heart, for a second he forgets why he was asking for more.

Maybe he will forever feel like he’s missing a piece of himself. Maybe that’s just how it’s going to be, for him. Whatever had sparked in him the first time he saw Harry, during that seminar about Mathematic History, is still there.

It was the third year of Uni for Louis and the first one for Harry, and while for a Math major like him it was one of the easiest things he had that semester. For Harry, a History major, it was complicated enough for him to turn to a stranger, frustration in his eyes, and beg him to tutor him.

Louis didn’t stand a chance. That spark grew its roots in every aspect of his being, and despite all the various heartbreaks he had suffered because of it, Harry remained his best friend in the whole world, and Louis remained, no matter his best efforts, head over heels for him.

Okay, he has wallowed in his pity enough.

He stands up, brushing the sand off his bum, and walks quickly over to Harry. He sits down next to him, so near their shoulders are pressed to each other.

Harry is warm, lovely, and he’s smiling at him with groggy eyes. Louis’ heart aches for how much love for him it’s carrying.

“Hey, love,” he says, pushing their shoulders together.

“Hey, Lou,” Harry smiles back at him.

“Had a nice nap?”

Harry nods. “How was your walk?”

 _Distressing._ “Very nice, thank you. Are you gonna need a massage or…?” He lingers.

Harry tries to pout, but he’s smiling too much to look convincing. “Only if you want to.”

“And when have I ever said no to you?” _in general,_ he could add. He truly never did. “Come on, lie down for me.”

Harry gives him a wicked smile, clearly still sleepy from his nap, and plants a kiss on Louis’ shoulder. “Thank you,” he adds, and goes laying down on his beach towel, his head resting on his hands, turned to one side.

Louis presses his hands on his lower back, knowing Harry carries all his pain there, and starts rubbing his muscles gently, lost in thought, Zayn’s words reeling in his mind.

 _Look at him, look at how he acts with you_ , he had said. But the Harry sleepy and pliant under his hands is the only Harry he has ever known. He drives away the thoughts, sure they won’t take him anywhere, and continues his massage.

~*~

The thoughts, of course, aren’t that easy to abandon.

When they go back for lunch and Harry deliberately walks too close to Louis so their hands brush, he thinks about it; when Harry notices how much better the garden already looks and praises him and smiles at him from ear to ear, Zayn’s words play in his head; and when Harry pokes him out of the kitchen, telling him to go have a shower while he fixes lunch for them, and his hands linger a second too long on Louis’ hip, he can’t help but have a bit of hope. Just a smudge.

Which is impractical, and also plain useless.

So Louis swallows the bitterness that risks closing his throat and suffocating him, replies to his email while Harry whines he’s ignoring him, and continues with his day.

~*~

It’s late afternoon, the sun is scorching, the wind is strong again (to the point where that morning they couldn’t use the parasol and it kept falling on them) and they have nothing to do.

They’re feeling too lazy to walk to the beach, and the sea is probably too rough and heavy right now to do anything besides sitting on the sand and looking at it.

So they’re throwing popcorn at each other’s mouth. It's not working very well, mind you, and on the ground around them they have the testimonials of every piece that didn’t make it. They're laughing and coughing and making too much noise in general, sitting five feet apart and trying their best.

(The popcorn is freshly made by Louis in a pan, and he's a tad too proud of that. He has seen how Harry had bitten down a smile and a tease when he insisted on making them fresh instead of buying them.)

Louis throws one that hits Harry in an eye, making him splutter and laugh, but it’s not as bright as it has been in the past minutes. Harry is getting more and more distracted, looking at the ants walking by or listening to the turtledoves’ coos. When Louis asks him about that, he says it’s nothing and turns his attention back on him, his eyes still lost.

Louis squints his eyes. “You're lying.”

“I'm not!”

That was too quick. Louis gasps and throws another one, with too much force. “You're _bored_ ,” he accuses.

“I'm not! I'd never,” Harry adds, as if that would be ridiculous, which-

“That's the correct answer, darling.” Louis eats one of them, still looking at his friend intently. “But I can see ya, you know.”

“We're attracting so many ants, look at that…” Harry gestures at the patio’s floor around them and yeah, there are too many of them around. If Louis causes an infestation because of his dumb games his uncle is going to skin him alive. “You should try harder, aim better,” he says, with a shit-eating grin on.

“I'm not the one who keeps moving at the last second, and stop trying to distract me. You're bored despite my brilliant presence? How dare you,” Louis is laughing, and tries to score another one. Harry doesn’t even open his mouth this round. “You _see_ that it’s you!”

“It's not that I’m bored, I just... Want to do something?” he asks, tentatively.

Louis rests his hands by the bowl. “Like what? Go fishing?”

“No.”

“Build a kite?”

Harry snorts. “Louuu.”

“I think we could find some coloring books in the house-”

“I meant something for adults-”

“I don't know, we could take the car and go to the village, see if they have a pub?” They don't, Louis already knows that, but he’s trying to remember if there’s anything interesting to do around here. “I had some friends who lived there, you know? I don't know where they still do, though. Could try to find them, see what they’re up to,” he finishes half-heartedly, more to himself than to Harry. His memories about them aren’t the clearest, but he remembers being a child and bored out of his mind, going around ringing his friends’ doors to see if they could hang out with him, to explore all the mysterious and dark corners they could find. There weren’t many, around a beach. There wasn’t much to do back then too.

“Yeah?” Harry’s voice is soft, interested. He keeps his legs folded to his chest, his arms around himself. If he wasn’t still wet from the shower and currently shirtless, Louis would wonder if he was cold. His collection of Hawaiian shirts is hanging to dry behind him, in the sunshine, and they reflect colorful light all over the garden. “You never told me about them.”

Louis feels a hint of melancholy sparking in his chest. So many things he didn’t say, so many friends he said goodbye to and never saw again. He doesn’t even remember some of their names, but has the path to their houses burnt forever in his memory. He never understood how brains work.

“It was just some summer friendships, you know? And I stopped coming here before phones were a thing so-”

“God, you're so old-”

“Shut up, me, old?” he says back, but he’s laughing with him. “You don't even wanna go to some pub. I was serious about the coloring books, yknow.”

“No, it's not that, I just want to... I mean, I don’t wanna go to a pub, I’d rather-” he stops himself again, and he wants to say _‘I wanna stay alone with you_ ’, Louis can tell, and it makes his head spin a little bit. “I don't know. Let's have an aperitif on the beach or something.”

Louis laughs again, loud. “And I am the old one?”

“You didn't keep friends because you didn't have a phone, try to get older than that,” Harry mutters, the same laugh in his tone, still hugging his legs. No wonder he has back pain when he keeps sitting like that.

“Oi, they didn't exist yet! And I wasn't that rich, you know.”

“You could've sent them a letter…”

“Oh, shush.” He throws another popcorn without warning him, and looks at how it bounces off his head and hits the ground. He’ll have to sweep the floor before they do whatever Harry wants to do. “So what you wanna do, as adventurous as you are?”

Harry lets go of his legs and tilts his body closer to Louis, clearly more interested in the current discussion. “So, we have the beers, right? And maybe we could look around if we have a bigger mat, for both of us, and bring the wine too and-”

“Uh. You gave this some thought yeah?” Louis is impressed.

“Haven't done that in so many years,” Harry continues like Louis didn’t say anything. Rude. “And I want to see a sunset over the sea. Haven’t seen the sea when it's pink in _forever_. It's gonna be so pretty.”

He looks like he’s lost in his thoughts again, right now, his eyes dreamy and a gentle smile over his face. It’s so easy to look at him going in his inner world, and Louis can only think, _as pretty as you are?_

“Okay H, sure. But I think it's gonna rain tonight,” he looks at him snapping back into reality, frowning. “No pink sunset, I’m afraid.” Harry just keeps looking at him, so he continues: “The wind is getting strong again, and I saw some mean clouds above us this morning. Yeah, it’s still hot, but look at those.” He points to the west, where just behind the trees a clump of dark clouds is hidden.

“You’re such a seaman. A _sailor_ ,” Harry muses, smiling again. “Oh, well, it's gonna be romantic then,” he shrugs, like he didn’t just make Louis choke on air.

“What-”

“You know…” he moves a hand around. His orange nail polish is all chipped, by now, and Louis wonders if he’s going to fix it before tonight. _For_ tonight. “The storm, the sea-”

“The... beers...?” 

“The wine!” Harry agrees. “Very _Sturm und Drang_.”

 _Oh._ Louis doesn’t even know if he’s disappointed or relieved. “Okay, History Major. Whatever you say,” he concedes, his smile not even that ironic.

It’s Harry’s effect on him: he would have made fun of anyone who would have proposed something like that, but if it’s Harry he has no complaints to offer. He just looks at him getting all giddy, starting to talk about how special sunsets are and how beautiful Romanticism is and how Caspar David Friedrich sometimes just _gets you, you know?_

Louis is not sure if he does, but he’d spend eternity listening to Harry explaining it to him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll post the third chapter this Sunday! As always, thank you for reading ♡


	3. Chapter 3

Not only Harry redid his nails for the evening, he also painted them in a new color and spent five entire minutes smiling down at his hands. It’s a peachy, soft one, and it makes a nice contrast with how tan he is getting.

When Louis said that, convinced to be giving a compliment to him, Harry had raised his eyes on him, looking vaguely panicked.

“Do I look like a _briddish girl_ now?” he had asked.

By the way he had said that, Louis was sure it was a joke of some sort, but if there was a reference in there he didn’t catch it. He just said, _“No?”_ , and by the way Harry had smiled at him he knew he said the right thing.

The wind is strong on the coast, the clouds menacing above them and the beach is desert, even if it’s not even 8 pm yet. That’s not odd, though: many houses around them are still empty, and by the look of it, a storm is approaching the coast.

Despite the sharp wind the sand is not rising, so Louis considers that a plus; but the clouds they could see earlier behind the trees, at the west, are now clustered above the horizon: they’re dark and so dense they look like a single, purple block. A corner of the sky is empty: right now it’s a just faded, pallid yellow, but it’s still early, so maybe they’ll be able to see a decent sunset later on.

Louis is not too worried about that: they have their beers, some peanuts, and he even found a beach mat that’s big enough for both of them: still, they’re sitting close, the side of their bodies pressed to one another.

He turns to Harry and finds him smiling at the horizon like that’s the best thing he’s ever seen. The sight makes him happily confused, which is a feeling he gets often around him.

“It’s not that special, is it?” he teases softly, to call Harry back to reality and make him sit with him, instead of letting him dream away.

It’s incredibly special, actually, and Louis knows it: they have an entire beach for themselves, the wind is so strong it mutes away any other sound, their beers are cold and bitter to perfection, and the air feels filled with static electricity.

Harry gasps for the outrage, fake and over the top: Louis is making fun of him gently, in a way, and he knows it. They always do this, to the point where it’s almost an inside joke only for the two of them: they love to provoke each other into talking about what they love, because they’re two nerds who are way too enthusiastic about their passions and way too eager to always share what they know, and they both love hearing the other so much.

“How dare you, how very dare you,” he replies, but he’s already smiling for the anticipation of the ramble he’s about to do.

Louis relaxes even more on Harry’s right shoulder, nudging him to continue, still looking at the angry sky. “I mean,” he adds. “It’s just a bit cloudy, innit? Could’ve stayed home. No pink sea for tonight, I'm afraid.”

“What!” Louis can hear the smile in his voice. “No, look at how the sun can’t shine through… doesn’t that make you so melancholic? You know, they had this word for it, _Sehnsucht_ , and it basically means…”

Louis gets even comfier, crouched on Harry. It’s gonna get chilled after the sunset, and he wants to trap all this warmth, while he can. He opens the beers with the bottle opener he has as a keychain and passes one to his friend.

He’s half listening to Harry, half arguing with him over nothing; this is, hands down, one of the things he loves the most about their friendship: this space where they allow each other to share and just be their nerd selves.

And Louis loves listening to him, because he doesn’t know much about history apart from the important bits, and Harry too loves when Louis talks about maths and logic, because he never got around them much, and they both genuinely love to learn new things.

And what Louis loves the most, about all of this, is how they’re always able to meet each other in the middle, how they can fuse their knowledge, how they can seriously discuss philosophy and beauty like it’s nothing, how they lose themselves into these discussions.

They halve their beers just like that, discussing nothing and looking at the sun drowning and at the sea growing rougher and rougher, letting out laughter that gets more and more relaxed the more beer they get inside their systems.

The shred of sky free from clouds is turning into a sanguine red, with the sun almost disappearing under the line of the horizon, when the storm starts.

The first lightning catches them by surprise: Harry shuts up immediately, and Louis sits up straighter, as if like that he could look better at the light that’s already gone. The white lights stripe across the dark clouds, and they can’t hear the thunders for how far the storm is from the coast.

That’s just-

“So fucking cool,” Louis breathes.

“See,” Harry says, eyes still fixed on the storm. “You just gotta wait and see, sometimes.”

The sea is getting rougher with the wind: it’s an angry, dark grey, and the waves keep crashing on the shore and forming a white foam that sparkles in the remaining sunlight. The waves come on and on, always the same, always roaring and crashing, eating the shore and any other sound away, their rumble so constant and calming.

As the storm goes on, always distant and never bothering them, they stop talking just to look at it for a while; and once it dies down and there’s nothing to look at anymore, the sea and the sky too dark to appreciate them, Harry lies down on Louis’ left, leaving his empty bottle near their feet.

The low clouds above them leave some room for the moon, which reflects some light on them by her corner of the sky; the sun is gone now, the sky is dark and they can see where the sea is just thanks to its foam.

“Do you think we will see some shooting stars?” arrives from down there, after some moments of silence.

Louis can’t help it: “It's a bit cloudy for that, don't you think love?” he muses, without even turning to him.

The clouds are covering the sea in front of them, but the moon is reflecting too much light on the clouds around her. The sky, right now, is pitch black, except for her.

Harry pokes him in his left hip, annoyed. “Not now, I meant like, in general, these days... You're such a dickhead,” he huffs.

“I call you love and you call me a dickhead, I see how it is,” he teases, poking him back on the stomach and making him laugh loudly. He stops before it could become a tickle fight and continues: “Anyway, yeah, probably? It's the right season, so-”

“Season?” Harry cuts him off, grabbing Louis’ hand between his own. “Shooting stars aren't _seasonal_.”

Louis looks at their hands together. In the moonlight, he can only catch black and white colors, maybe some cold hues like blue and green. He can’t see Harry’s face very well from where he’s sitting, because it’s casting a shadow on itself. Louis doesn’t tug his hand back.

“Well, no, they aren’t, but... We could see the Perseids.”

Harry only tilts his head at that. Louis knows it’s his turn for lecturing, and turns to give all his attention to Harry.

“Okay, so, the Perseids, my dear child, are a meteor shower that pops up every summer in our skies and… Listen, there's no way you don't know what I'm talking about,” he cuts himself off, even if he loves to talk about astronomy, because there’s _no way_ Harry has never looked at shooting stars during summer.

Harry squeezes his hand gently. “I just didn't know they were called like that.”

Okay, Louis can live with that. “Well, yeah. They’re called Perseids, because they appear near the Perseus constellation, which is…” he looks up to the sky, ready to calculate the distance between the best-known constellation and spot the one he’s talking about, but the sky is exactly like it was minutes ago: cloudy and too dark. “We can't see it now, too many clouds,” he grumbles, not even masking the annoyance from his voice.

Harry remains silent for a while, his face still in the dark.

“Didn't you want to become an astro... Something?” he asks softly, still playing with Louis’ hand. “Before you got that job and started doing... Tech?”

It hurts more than it should. Louis ignores it and prevaricates:

“You really know your words.” He wants his hand back now, but he knows how that would play in Harry’s mind, so he looks over his shoulder, back to the sea: the waves are crashing on the shore, furious. Louis wonders if tomorrow they’ll be able to have a swim; if not, he will have to think about something to keep them entertained.

Harry rolls his eyes. Louis can’t see him, but he’s sure he did. “Be less of an ass and reply to me, come on.”

“I'm a software engineer by the way, just so you know.”

“Yeah, well, congrats, it's not like I was around when you got employed or anything,” Harry comments, bitter, and _fuck,_ that stings. Louis knows it’s his fault, that he got his master’s degree, left Uni and Harry with it, got the first job he was offered with decent pay and convinced himself he could fall out of love with him if he tried hard enough. “Didn't you want to be something else? You like stars.” Somehow, his voice is back to soft now, and he still cares, he’s still this lovely to him. He still remembers Louis’ biggest passion, he still wonders why he didn’t go down that path.

It takes him a beat to find the voice to say: “Everyone loves stars.”

He knows he's not replying, but he's not in the mood to have that conversation, especially now after they’ve seen a storm together, and are now holding hands in the moonlight. Louis doesn’t know what that means, if it means something at all, but he doesn’t dare disrupt it.

Silence stretches between them, and Louis finds he doesn’t mind: it’s not a heavy one. He’s again turned around, to look at the shore, thinking about how he doesn’t see the sea, too dark to detect in the night, and can only see where the foam is gathering on the shore.

Harry is still holding his hand, turning it between his like he’s trying to study every fold and crinkle.

“Tell me about them?” he asks, after an immeasurable amount of time. His voice his nearer, and when Louis looks at him, he finds him curled around him, his face near his lap

“About stars?”

“Yeah. Tell me something I don't know.”

Louis smiles in the dark; just like that, they’re as good as before. “Well, that's easy.”

He adjusts himself because he got the hint, _Harry wants to lay his head on his lap,_ and once that’s done his right hand, the available one, finds its way onto Harry’s curls.

He starts talking about the Perseus constellation, because that’s the easiest link, spacing then onto binary stars and type Ia supernovae; he never goes near the mythological tale, because he guesses Harry knows that better than him.

With his hand in his curls and his eyes lost to a sky he can’t see, Louis loses himself in daydreams, too; his beer is over, he feels positively tipsy and floaty, but he won’t drink a second one if Harry isn’t with him.

If it wasn’t for Harry’s sporadic questions and comments, Louis would have thought he had fallen asleep by now: he’s getting colder, he can tell by how curled up he’s holding himself, and he hasn’t moved from Louis’ lap in a long time.

There’s another pause that Louis doesn’t know how to fill. He has no idea what hour it could be, but it’s early and he doesn’t want to go back home already. He likes whatever they have here: a corner of the world where they are the only humans left, talking about art and stars.

“Lou?” a voice comes from his lap. It’s not as thin as he would’ve thought: Harry is not sleepy at all, he’s just… lying down. “Lie down with me?”

Louis studies the situation. “We won’t fit,” it’s what he settles on, his hand still scratching Harry’s head.

“We won’t- oh come on, come here,” there’s a laughter in his voice. He tugs his shirt and Louis plops almost on top of him. They readjust their position, until they’re lying on their backs, their legs resting on the cold sand, nose in the air, next to each other.

Louis looks at the moon, and the moon stares back. Harry is plastered onto his left side, warm and solid on his skin.

He feels a bit like when they had to decide how to sleep and discovered they had to share a bed, but right now is objectively weirder: one thing is to sleep on a double bed because the other room is inaccessible, another is to be this close, moonlight shining on them, after having discussed poetry and having seen a storm in the distance. It _feels_ different.

He can see Harry's face now: the moon is reflecting cold light on his left side, making him look paler than what he actually is, his eyes more definite.

Harry is looking at him, Louis is looking at the moon. He wonders again if he is the one making a big deal out of this when there’s no reason to, or if he should listen to Zayn a bit, and think that all of this is real, _could be_ real.

But Louis can’t be thinking about Zayn right now, he doesn’t _want_ to, because he’s lying on a desert beach, on a mat that’s too little for two people, looking at a crescent moon and wondering if he, like her, will ever feel whole again.

This feels like something. The moon is in a corner of the sky, and if the wind continues like this it’s gonna get covered as well by the clouds sooner or later, and it will leave them in the complete dark. Louis doesn’t know if it’s the beers, or how pretty their entire evening was, or how close they’re lying, but his heart is racing. He doesn’t dare to look at Harry.

They’re a bit tangled because the mat is not that big, after all, not enough to fit both of them when lying like this. Harry is curled up against him, whining because he’s getting cold.

“I’m the one who’s always cold, Haz,” he says, grateful to be saying something. “It’s just a bit breezy.”

“I can be cold too,” he argues and well, the tip of his nose does feel a bit freezing. “I’m suffering. My toes will fall off.”

That makes both of them laugh loudly, and Louis holds Harry tighter onto himself. He doesn’t have any extra clothing to give him, he only has his own hoodie and isn’t it crazy how he seriously thought, _‘oh maybe I can give him this and remain in just a t-shirt_ '? 

He lets him go after a second, but he can feel Harry's eyes on him. Louis turns around and yeah, Harry is lying on his side, staring at him. Louis holds his gaze for a second, his heart in his throat. Harry’s eyes are so set, his expression so serious, no trace of their laugh on there. But Louis can only think, _what is happening? Why? Why now?_ It doesn’t make any sense in his head, so turns around and looks at the sky again.

“Lou?” Louis doesn’t move. “Louis,” Harry tries again. “Look at me?” His voice is small, but steady and sincere.

And Louis can’t ignore him. _When have I ever said no to you?_ The answer keeps on being _never._

Louis turns his head and finds Harry near him, so close his eyes almost can’t focus. Harry smiles and it’s his usual, happy grin, and Louis is a bit confused by himself. _You’re my best friend,_ he thinks, _then why am I so scared? I trust you, what could ever happen?_

He listens to himself and turns on his left side too, and now they’re facing each other, a few inches between them. They remain like that, looking into each other’s eyes for god’s know how long.

The sea is always the same, the wind, the moon too, there’s no way of knowing how long it has been. They’re out of here, in another dimension where the only things that exist are the two of them and the beach.

They look in each other’s eyes the whole time, and Louis knows how weird that is, how little he would have resisted with anyone else, but Harry isn’t anyone else. Louis loses the borders of his body, and reality blurs into Harry’s eyes. They’re breathing the same air, listening to the same sounds alone in the world.

And just like that, he forgets his fears. It’s only them, it’s always Harry, the guy he has known since he was twenty-two, the guy he had shared so many heart-to-heart with, the guy who he used to call just to be silent on the phone, the one who made a place like London feel like _home_.

He doesn’t know who gets closer first, but he knows Harry’s breath in on him now: it’s cheap beer and too many peanuts, just like his. They’re in each other’s space, in each other’s oxygen, and Louis knows Harry is another person, but it doesn’t feel like it. It feels like whatever Harry will do, he will follow him to the edge of the world.

So he moves to get closer, too, and Harry’s face, in the moonlight, softens to only shadows and lines, and Louis holds his breath, drawing his face even closer, and...

And then, it doesn’t happen like that.

What happens is that Harry raises one of his hands, and slowly, delicately, he caresses Louis’ cheek. He smiles, and it still looks like a private moment only they could understand. Louis smiles, too, under Harry’s fingertips.

Harry, slowly, always oh so slowly, keeps going like that, and caresses Louis’ cheek again, to then lets his hand travel to his shoulder, his neck, always with soft, feathery touches and a delicate smile on his face.

He’s so gentle and slow, so nice with his butterfly touches, looking hesitant and completely certain at the same time. So Louis, slowly, too, tentatively, raises his own hand and caresses him back.

Harry smiles immediately under the touch, and Louis presses his thumb on his dimple, making him giggle under his breath. Louis’ head feels light and empty, beaming with just happiness. The only thing he can perceive is his own safety and how happy he is.

This is his best friend in the entire universe. Why was he so scared before? He doesn’t remember anymore.

They keep going like that, dancing around the other in a surreal and intimate daze for an immeasurable amount of time.

And when it happens, when it really happens, Louis has no idea who got closer first, who made the first move, in his ears only the rumble of the sea and the whistle of the wind, in his eyes only Harry's smile.

They don’t kiss like their first time. Sure, they’re a bit tipsy, but this is so beautiful and intimate, this is so _real._ This is gentle, sincere. They're confined in their corner of the world, and no one will barge in and disturb them, disrupt this moment they've created. 

It feels like a continuation of their butterfly touches from before, it doesn’t feel like they’re doing something different. It doesn’t feel bigger or more important, like it wouldn’t be something out of the ordinary: it’s still a _HarryandLouis_ thing. 

They keep kissing, on and on, as delicately as they were touching. It’s just little gentle pecks, just peppering kisses all over their faces, hands in their hair, smiling so big they have to stop and look at the other, from time to time, still with a hint of a laugh on their lips.

They start kissing with a tad more intention then, their hands now all over, their breath heavy and short, still biting back their smiles.

They simultaneously break apart and look at each other in the eyes, their breath heavy, their eyes still lost.

Harry looks out a black and white movie, with his lips bitten and his doe eyes. Louis can’t see his face that well, but he looks blissed out, exactly how Louis feels. Harry moves closer again, but this time he rests his head in the crock of Louis’ neck.

“I’m still cold,” he whines, and Louis laughs at that, loud and sincere, dragging Harry too in it, until they’re shaking with it, holding onto each other.

Everything is so perfect, isn’t it? This is his best friend of the entire world, and he knows him so well. Nothing out of the ordinary happened, they’re still Harry and Louis, and Harry is still cold.

Now that they’re not kissing anymore Louis realizes it’s completely dark. He turns to look at the moon again, but she had disappeared behind the clouds to let them have their moment, minutes, or hours, or ages ago. The only source of light now is from the faint orange streetlamp behind them, but it doesn’t reach the beach, and they can barely see each other’s faces for how dark it is.

They stand up at the same time, without saying anything, like they’re still blurred into the other and don’t need the extra words. They take their bottles and empty bags, fold the mat together, and after that Louis turns around and sees the streetlamp’s light better, as it was behind the sandhills at the beginning of the beach, which provide a barrier to the street.

There, he has a moment where he feels completely lost. He freezes, confused, and thinks, _what does all of this mean?_ He feels disoriented, and for a second he thinks, _what even is a street lamp?_ _What’s that for?_ He and Harry only need the moon and the sea with them.

But he can’t imagine a world where there are only him, the sea and Harry, not anymore, because if there’s a street lamp, then there is the rest of the world as well.

The rest of the world didn’t disappear like the sun under the horizon or the moon behind the clouds, the rest of the world was waiting there for the whole time. A place where he and Harry are alone, undisturbed, a place where they can kiss and think nothing of it, where actions don’t have consequences but there’s only the euphoria, a world only for the two of them doesn’t exist.

Oh. _Oh._

He exited his fairytale world and now he feels misplaced, dragged back there without his permission, staring at the orange light, frozen.

Harry, next to him, takes the beer bottles from the sand, holding them in the same hand, and they clink, hitting each other.

 _Oh_ , he thinks again. _It was only because we drank? It’s just like last time?_

His heart doesn’t flutter in his chest anymore, now every beat feels like a hit straight to his chest. He feels nauseous, confused, so he starts walking without waiting for his friend, for his _friend,_ because he feels out of it. Maybe he needs a moment, maybe it was just a funny thing to do after the alcohol, maybe he needs to stay alone for five minutes, to go to sleep alone, _oh god, they have only one bed, what is he gonna do, he-_

Harry walks up to him and takes his hand. He slides his fingers through Louis’, the bottles in his other hand still clinking, and he sways their hands like they’re little kids.

Just like that, the turmoil in Louis’ head gets put on hold. He looks down at their hands, now walking slower than before, and just thinks, _maybe it isn’t like last time?_ He raises his head, and Harry was already looking at him, the same soft smile as before.

Louis squeezes his hand, hesitantly, and Harry squeezes back.

They walk home just like that, with their fingers intertwined and the bottles clattering the whole way through. They climb on their bed together, and fall asleep like how they were lying on the sand: Louis’ arms around Harry, Harry tucked under Louis’ chin, and their legs tangled.

 _This isn’t like last time,_ Louis muses, drunk on cheap beer and pure happiness. _It's not, because we're still together, he didn't run away, I didn't make an idiot of myself. This time is real._

He falls asleep with a smile on his lips.

~*~

The morning after Louis wakes up with the sun shining directly on his face.

He blinks, muddled, using a hand to cover his eyes: he forgot to close the shutter the night before.

Why did he… _Oh._

Harry is still laying over him, heavy, hot and undisturbed. Louis extricates himself from his too many limbs, and, as quietly as he can, goes downstairs.

Turtledoves are the only ones awake with him: it’s barely after sunrise. He goes out in the garden, and appreciates how the sky is a clear, pale blue, free from any clouds. The wind of the night before must have chased them out.

He comes back to the kitchen, and starts a coffee for himself. It’s too early to be already up, but he doesn’t want to go to bed again. The effect of the beers has worn off, and now his mind is sharp and responsive.

With his gaze lost on the pale yellow tiles, he thinks back at the night before. He wishes, foolishly, to go back to bed and have all his doubts wiped out by having Harry asleep on top of him again. He knows he tends to overthink everything, and knows that being here, alone, won’t do him any good.

It’s just that he doesn’t believe it. Maybe it's good he's overthinking everything now, because this is too good to be true, too poetic to be real, and maybe it’s better he comes to terms with it while he can, before making a fool of himself. _Again._

After years, this is how it went? Did Harry randomly decide that he likes him back? For sure he doesn’t. It doesn’t make any sense, in Louis’ mind. Probably it was just something that felt right in the moment, and that will never happen again.

It's not like the last five years didn't happen. And it's not just Louis' botched confession, it's everything that happened after that. Harry never looked at him with an ounce of interest, he knows that. Sympathy, affection, even love? Yeah, sure. But not attraction. He has seen Harry flirting with people, undressing them with his eyes, and he knows he never got to that receiving end.

He will have to live with the memory of the most wonderful night and kiss he’s ever had, and move on with his life.

Coffee's out. He takes it with his mug outside, sitting on the patio and hoping to see the grey cat Harry had told him about. Sadly, no cat appears, but when he’s almost done with his coffee he hears some muffled footsteps from behind him.

Harry steps out, feet bare and still rubbing his eyes, squinting because of the light. He has Louis’ hoodie on, which makes Louis automatically both smile and feel heavy.

“Why are you already up?” Louis whispers, respectfully of the quiet surroundings. “It’s so early.”

“Could ask the same to you,” Harry mumbles back, and sits next to him.

He takes the mug out of Louis’ hand and kisses him softly, cupping his cheek with his free one. Then, when Louis is blinking, his brain trying to compute what just happened, he takes a sip of his coffee.

“Bleah,” Harry grimaces, giving it back to him like it’s degrading for him to even just hold it. “Have you ever heard of sugar?”

“I’ve already put milk in,” he tries to defend himself, still dazed.

“You can put both, you know?”

Louis nods, looking down. His doubts aren't gone, but right now there's a warm, fuzzy ball of happiness blooming in his chest. There’s hope.

“Hey,” Harry calls his attention again. Louis looks at him, and he’s smiling warmly at him, his eyes still a little bit droopy. Louis is _so_ in love it makes him stupid. “It’s alright, yeah? We’re alright.”

Louis doesn’t dare wonder what he’s talking about, if it is the same exact thing he was brooding over before Harry woke up. Instead, he stands up and takes him by his hand.

“Come on,” he whispers, tugging him back to the kitchen. “I’ve left some coffee for you.”

([x](https://www.instagram.com/p/B_9nvLMFJU1/?igshid=1rsqs4byshewi))

~*~

They took their time having breakfast, never stopping holding hands, no matter how ridiculous that was, waiting together for the gray cat to appear (it never did).

Louis, after that first moment of doubt he had when he was alone, got comfortable in the early sunshine, the hope in his chest transformed into simple happiness. That dooming feeling of defeat never got back, never had the chance to: not with Harry right beside him, sitting close and talking about some weird dream he had, no clumsiness between them.

It feels much more real to be able to look him in the eyes now, to see where his face _is,_ and the situation in itself is much less enchanted than the night before: now, they’re just having breakfast, and they’re still together. It feels real, this time.

Sure, it’s sunrise and they’re in their garden, something that has never happened (and will never do) in London, but how many times have they ended up after a night of partying in a random little diner with milkshakes and fries? Way too many. So, this isn’t _that_ different.

Even with as much time as they took, once they got to the beach they found it empty again. It was early still, the water freezing and the sand still cold from the night before, even though the sun had already risen a couple of hours ago.

The sea, that morning, looked like a mirror. It was a deep, dark blue, extended to infinity, completely flat, almost like the storm of the night before never happened. The sky was the same dark hue, faded on the line of the horizon.

Little waves crashed lazily on the shore, making the sea look like a breathing, sleeping beast. The crescent moon was already up in the sky, greeting them from above.

They had another couple of hours of secrecy before the beach started filling up with loud people, families and groups. It’s the first weekend since they’re there, and Louis knows that from this week on there will be many more people on holiday to share their corner of paradise with. 

The same group of friends that were playing volleyball next to them some days prior appears, too, and this time Harry doesn’t even spare a look at them. Louis doesn’t bother hiding his satisfied grin.

He hasn't stopped smiling since he woke up, not that there is any reason to. All in all, their entire morning goes as smoothly and as relaxing as it could. And then Louis gets a text.

It makes him groan out loud, and reluctantly interrupt his and Harry’s reminiscence of one of their best parties during Louis’ third year, the one that cemented them as friends.

“Sorry H,” he sighs, taking the plates of their finished lunch. “I have to go, won’t take long but-”

“Wait, what?” Harry touches his wrist, making Louis look at him. “Go where?”

Louis puts the forks back on the table. “Ni can’t fix a problem he’s having,” he explains. “So I’m gonna go help him out, I think I’ll go upstairs so it’ll be quieter, is that ok?”

Harry’s eyes go from wide open, surprised, to squinted; he’s frowning now, expression dark. _“Ni?”_

“Yeah, Niall…?” Louis lingers for a second, confused by the shift in Harry’s mood. _Oh shit,_ he realizes, _he doesn’t know who that is_. “He’s a colleague of mine. Good guy, yeah, but he’s having a problem with a bug. I’ll try to see if I can do something.”

Harry, if possible, now looks even more menacing. “But… you’re on holiday? Are you seriously gonna work now? For this dude?” he almost spits out.

Louis, sitting in front of him, is baffled. They were chilling, a minute ago. Sure, he’s not happy to have to work either, but Harry is looking a tad too angry on his behalf. He’d rather not have to argue with him, on top of having surprise work to do.

“I’m not working _for_ him, I’m working _with_ him,” he specifies. “And we’re not many in my department, and Ni’s so cool, he’s such a fun lad. I wanna help him out if I can.”

Harry is still scowling. “If he doesn’t know how to do his job why does he work there?” he mutters, almost to himself.

Louis stares at him for a second, lost for words. Then, he stands up, collecting the plates and cutlery to take back to the kitchen.

“Writing code is not something you can always work out,” he starts by, trying to not snap at him. “Sometimes you need another perspective to be able to solve your problem. Also, it’s not something that can be taught, you have to… to invent something every single time. You only got the basics. It’s not like you already know what type of problems will arise. It's _teamwork_.”

Harry is sitting still, looking at him cleaning the table, without asking if he can help, aloof expression now on. “So why would _you_ know how to solve this? You’re not even in your office, you’re on _holiday._ ”

Maybe Louis is imagining that, but it sounds like there was a _with me and not with him_ implied there. He drives the thought away: Harry jealous of him? Nah, could never happen, and also, over a colleague for a coding problem? Makes no sense. He probably just wasn’t expecting it, and thinks it’s not fair.

“What I have to tell you, that I'm smarter than him?” he sighs, picking up the pile of plates he’s created. “I just wanna help, we’re not many, I told ya… just, give me half an hour. Maybe more. Then I’ll be back.”

He starts walking to the kitchen, when Harry mutters, loud enough for Louis to hear him: “You’re not even a proper software engineer, are you? You shouldn’t work as one.” 

Louis places the dirty plates in the sink, figuring Harry will wash them later. For sure he has no time nor will to do that now. He has no intention of getting back and asking him, _“what exactly is your problem?”,_ either, so he just calls back:

“I’m not, thank you for the reminder.” He grabs his laptop and heads upstairs. “But Ni’s my friend, and now I’m gonna help him. See you later.”

He starts typing sitting on the bed, with his back resting on the wall. He’s hitting the keyboard a little too forcefully, but after some minutes of Niall explaining the bug to him he gets lost in the process, his brain focusing solely on strings of code.

He doesn’t get why Harry was so short with him, though. He wasn’t in the mood to pick up a fight at all, so he’s glad he left like that, but what was that about?

Yeah, he’s on holiday, and sure, it’s a bummer he’s now sitting on his bed doing this instead of spending his time with Harry doing… Anything else, but Niall is his friend and he sounded pretty distressed over text. Niall helped him out a lot, especially in the beginning when he wasn’t completely in tune with their job, so Louis likes to help him back, if he can.

He could’ve texted him, _soz i’m on holiday byeee,_ but why would he? He likes to help, he likes knowing he’s now skilled enough to solve problems like these ones, to offer a hand if he can.

He relaxes his shoulder and starts working the best he can, losing track of time and focusing on working the problem out. He loves this, he loves his job so much: sure, he accepted it because the pay was something to get teary-eyed for, but he met some cool people like that, like Niall for example. And coding, when you have an idea of what you’re doing, is fun, too. It always looks like a game, like a puzzle to resolve; and when you start your code and it actually works, well, there’s no better feeling than that.

He doesn’t know how much time has passed when there’s a knock on the bedroom door that almost makes him jump out of bed. He was so deep in thought he must have missed the footsteps heading upstairs.

He raises his head from his corner of the bed: Harry is standing next to the open door, waiting for Louis to notice him. He has a big smile on, and his hair is damp like he just got out of the shower. Some of its water is dripping down his chest.

“I thought maybe you needed a break?” Louis snaps back to reality and notices he’s offering him a small plate. He is acting all cute, as if nothing had happened.

“Uh, sure H, come on in,” Louis says, not moving from his seat. He doesn’t put his laptop away either: he’s almost done anyway.

Harry walks up to him and sits on the bed, too, crossing his legs next to him, but far away enough for them to not touch. He places the plate on the sheets between them: it’s filled with peaches cut into cubes, all of the same size, with toothpicks sticking out some of them. It’s so unbearably _cute_ and _Harry,_ Louis has to stop his typing to properly appreciate it.

“H!” he exclaims. “Thank you, that's… thank you.” It’s not about the plate itself, is it? Is about caring for someone enough to bring them cut fruits while they’re working. “Sorry if I abandoned you for-” he glances the corner of his laptop and almost screeches out: “ _Fuck,_ it’s been two hours already?” He was certain this was going to take him one hour, _if that_.

Harry, though, only laughs. He is relaxed and elated, grinning with his dimples out, and Louis wants to pester him.

“You didn’t abandon me, come on,” he’s still laughing. “I was an ass at lunch, and wanted to say sorry. Look,” he adds, pushing the peaches even nearer Louis’ thigh. “I even brought toothpicks for you, so you can eat whatever you want and your hands won’t get sticky, so you can keep using your laptop,” he explains, so proud of himself he’s about to burst.

“Haz,” Louis says, tenderly, taking his hand. “What would I do without you?”

Harry squeezes his hand, smiling sweetly. “You’d _suck_.”

Louis doesn’t laugh at that because he is, in fact, older than thirteen. Harry laughs with him.

Louis keeps typing, alternating his free hand between bringing peaches to his mouth and bothering Harry in some way or another. Incredible how he succeeds in pinching and poking him, considering he’s still looking at the screen, while Harry is staring at him. Just openly staring. God, this boy is so weird (and Louis likes him so much). 

“But you’re done, right?” Harry asks after a couple of minutes spent like that.

“Yeah, almost. Sorry love, the problem was bigger than what Ni thought.”

Louis brings another cube to his mouth, and takes a moment to appreciate it: the peach is so sweet and soft, just ripe enough, and it tastes like a dream. It tastes like summer.

The afternoon glow filters in the room, and despite the open windows and the shutter halfway down to not let too much sun in, it’s so, so hot in the room. And not in a sexy way: Louis is sweating, but until now he was distracted enough to not think about it. He had a shirt when he came upstairs, but he took it off a long time ago, and he’s only in his swimsuit, his sizzling laptop burning his thighs.

He bites into another piece, and it’s so juicy a drop lands on his stomach.

Harry eyes that, seeming transfixed. He’s bared chested too, with only his swimsuit and another Hawaiian shirt on, always open with nothing underneath. Louis would ask what’s the purpose of that, but he likes being able to see Harry’s naked skin too much to question any of it. His hair drips water onto his chest, drawing wet tracks on his tattoos.

Louis wonders if he’s doing that to torture him. Not that he minds but… He’s staring at Harry a lot more than he’s working or eating his peaches, and Harry is staring back. He clears his throat and looks back on the screen, unable to focus on anything else than Harry eating with his hands, a few inches away from him.

Harry is… Harry is hot, he has to admit that.

He has always thought that, ever since that seminar: he knows how to carry himself, he’s confident without being cocky, and is currently sitting almost naked with his beautiful body in the afternoon sunshine. And it’s only that: he’s charming, funny, he always looks at you like he wants to learn from you, listen to you, he always remembers everything you’ve said to him. And there’s more, he… He’s eating with his bare hands, right now, and Louis can’t stop staring at him.

His hands, _god, his hands._ Louis always had a weakness for those.

He’s picking piece after piece with his beautiful, long fingers, his smooth skin, his tan hands, popping them lazily between his bitten-red lips. There’s juice pooling in the corners of his mouth, and he's half smirking, knowing how much Louis is staring back at him, now.

The sinking feeling Louis feels in his stomach when he looks back at his screen again is one he knows too well: guilt. He shouldn’t look at his friend like that.

It takes a moment for him to remember that maybe… Maybe he doesn’t have to feel like that, not now, maybe not anymore. He is so used to repressing his feelings that for a second he had forgotten he and Harry _kissed,_ and in broad daylight, too, while completely sober.

He glances up: Harry is full-on smirking now, relaxed back on the heel of his hand, his whole body exposed. Maybe Louis should shut his laptop and do something about the distance between their bodies.

As he thinks that, Harry bolts out of the room, leaving him confused. He comes back moments later, an entire peach in his hands: he sits back on the bed, closer to him this time, and starts tearing it apart with his bare hands.

Louis almost chokes on his own spit.

Harry splits it open easily, the mellow pulp giving up quickly under his hands. He’s trying to do it above the plate, but the juice gets all over his fingers, down his wrists, and onto the bedsheets. Louis doesn’t mind: his brain is too busy having a short circuit.

Harry raises his face to him, smiling. His lips and chin are shiny for the juice, and Louis wants to devour him.

“D’ya want some?” he offers, a cheeky glint in his eyes.

“You… you'll soil the sheets,” Louis anything but _chokes_ again. This fucker knows too well what he’s doing.

“There's a washer downstairs,” he reminds him, as he savors another bite.

“We'll have to sleep in that,” _god,_ why doesn’t he shut up and do something about-

“Yeah but... Wanna soil them in something worse?” He tries to wiggle his eyebrows at the end of that, but he’s already laughing too much to do it.

Louis is done with him, and he's done with his long, tan fingers dropping peach juices all around. He’s done having those hands and those sticky lips not _on him._

“Okay, that's enough.”

He puts his laptop aside, and in a singular move he unfolds his legs and gets on his knees first, to then pushing Harry down, pressing on his shoulders and laying on top of him. Harry laughs, with his peach still in his hands, in front of his mouth. His eyes twinkle of mischief and glee, and he lets Louis guide him down on the mattress. 

“Oh, have you _finally_ done working, busy man?”

“Shut your mouth,” Louis breathes, brain fogged by desire, and closes the distance between them.

His mouth is warm and sticky, sweet and soft under him, but there’s nothing soft in the way Louis is kissing him right now. 

Harry’s skin is unbearably smooth and _cool_ under him, and Louis wasn’t expecting that _at all,_ because it’s boiling hot in this room, and he has been sweating in here for hours. Harry tastes like peaches, he tastes like fucking peaches.

It’s the most magical fucking experience of his life, because not only he’s kissing Harry, he’s kissing him while he tastes this sweet and is this lovely to touch.

Harry’s hand finds his way to his hair, and Louis doesn’t mind how sticky everything is becoming: it’s making him want to lick every inch of his skin. He deepens the kiss, shifting his whole weight on him, chasing the hunger that is growing inside him.

All of this is so fucking better than spending two hours on a laptop to do a debugging.

Harry stops kissing him and looks at him, the same desire obvious in his eyes. He tilts an eyebrow, smirking and-

And he brings his damned peach to his mouth, giving that another bite.

Louis stares at him for a second, transfixed, then starts laughing so hard he has to lie on his side, hiding his face on Harry’s shoulder.

“What?” Harry tries to ask, but his voice is muffled by the food, and that only makes Louis laugh harder. “It’s my snack,” he’s trying to sound serious, he really is, but he’s laughing as much as Louis now.

And Louis has no patience, that’s well known, so he pushes his lips on Harry’s again, tasting the fruit in his mouth. He shifts on top of him, juice staining their bodies, and keeps kissing him, with more and more desperation, more and more desire.

They’re glued to each other, blind with desire, chasing down what is torturing them, following every move of the other, their hands everywhere.

Yeah, Louis is glad Harry made him have a break.

~*~

When Louis and Harry finally go downstairs, to enjoy the beach in the last bits of sunshine, they feel almost boneless, giddy with happiness, and can’t stop tickling, poking, and touching each other in any kind of way.

It may be because their sheets aren’t, in fact, soiled with only peach juices anymore.

Could be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! I'll post the next chapter tomorrow, and the last one on Tuesday. Thank you so much for reading x


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mmmh I think this one is my favorite one. Hope you'll like it as well!

Louis doesn’t know if he’s ever felt this happy. He glances up at Harry, smiling and showing him his tongue when he meets his eyes. Harry copies him immediately, and Louis wonders if his heart can bust with so much happiness.

He and Harry are always glued together touching, annoying and teasing each other, as they’ve always done, but now it’s so much better (and _worse_ ) because every time Louis works up the courage to kiss him, Harry kisses back. To the point that he doesn’t have to _work up the courage_ anymore, and sometimes (like _now_ ) he just leans over and steals a kiss. Harry kisses him back.

He kisses back, every time, and Louis feels like he’s getting drunk on happiness.

It’s the morning after, and they’re sitting at the living room table to write down a shopping list for later. Or, in theory, that’s what they should be doing: all their food is over and has been lacking for days, but they were too distracted to mind; but now things are becoming a bit too tragic (Louis is on the _last_ bowl of Coco Pops) so they have to step out of their paradise and go to get groceries. 

Louis never thought something so simple and obvious, and frankly so _boring_ could be so domestic and almost romantic? Which is weird, he has to admit it, because they have done the same exact thing a week prior, and now it feels completely different. But of course it does, when everything has changed and they’re so stuck to each other. 

“You know what,” Louis says, hooking his ankle with Harry’s one. “We should get potatoes. I can make you some mean dauphinoise potatoes, if the oven can bear that much work.”

Harry raises his eyebrows, skeptical. “There’s _no way_ you know how to cook that.”

Louis gasps loudly. “You never believe in me-”

“I never believe in your cooking skills, not in you-”

“I wanna make them for you! You’re such an ungrateful cunt, I swear.”

They continue like that, laughing and bickering. Harry wants to bake something else, and they’re deep in brainstorming about pastries when the doorbell rings.

They raise their heads, surprised.

“Okay, I’ll go,” Louis says when he remembers he’s the host, here. “Don’t put goji berries or any of that shit while I’m away,” he admonishes him, and walks out. He hears Harry shouting _“but they’re good for you!”_ but he’s already out.

There’s an old woman outside the gate, on the other side of the garden. She’s squinting her eyes in the sun despite the sunglasses, and Louis vaguely recognizes her. He remembers her from when he was young, but he hasn’t seen anyone from here in almost twelve years.

“Good morning?” he offers, giving her his most polite smile. He walks up to her, and opens the gate.

“Hello dear, I’m your neighbour,” she replies cheerfully, voice a bit croaky. “My husband and I just arrived, we’re gonna stay here for a couple of weeks.”

“Oh, okay, good,” Louis feels a bit confused. “Enjoy your stay…?”

She smiles again, a bit patronizing this time. “I wanted to say hello to George? Is he perhaps in the house, now?”

 _Oh, right._ “Oh no I’m sorry, he’s not here. I'm his nephew, Louis?”

“Oh, Louis!” Her eyes sparkle in recognition. “Oh, dear, of course you are.”

She gets closer to him, and compliments him for five minutes straight. She then moves on with questions about his entire family, to then go about his personal life (complete with a genuine gasp for _‘a master’s degree in mathematics?!’_ which may be Louis’ favorite thing about having that qualification in general).

“I’ll leave you to your things, then,” she says when she’s done with questions. “Are you here all alone?”

“No, no, I'm here with-” for a second, his brain gets fogged. “I’m here with a friend. We’re staying until next weekend.” There’s something amiss, there. “Do you need a hand for the luggage? Or for opening your house? We could help,” he rushes to add, to change the topic.

“Oh, what a sweetheart you are.” It’s been fifteen minutes, and this lady already adores him. “No, don’t worry about it, my husband will do it.”

They chat for another couple of minutes, until the lady parts from him and catches up with her husband inside their house.

Louis turns around, walks until the patio but doesn’t go inside the house yet. 

Thing is… of course Harry is not his boyfriend, and is, indeed, his friend. So everything he said was correct. No fretting over there. Of course. He knows that, he always knew that. And it’s not like he would blurt out that to an old lady he hasn’t seen in a decade, especially when he knows what the truth is, and everything is so obvious, but then… Why does he feel so hit by this realization now?

He knows he shouldn’t get so inside his head about it, because this, whatever this is, has started happening three days ago, he should just chill and go with it. He should get back inside the house, finish the shopping list and go on with his life.

But… the root of the problem is that Louis had hoped and prayed this would happen for years on end. Almost every shooting star, almost every birthday and each first fruit of the season, he had hoped. He had a tiny bit of belief that didn’t want to die down, and it was ridiculous, no one knew that better than him, but he kept on clinging on it.

And then it happened. And Louis just… accepted it. With no further questions.

And now, frozen in his childhood garden, hiding from both his neighbors and Harry, he’s wondering if he didn’t go about all of this too easily. If he didn’t brush off too many things.

He realizes now that he thought nothing of it, like it wasn’t happening in real life. Like it was just an over-realistic dream he’s living.

In some sort, this is his dream: he’s with Harry, alone somewhere nobody knows them or bothers them, eating fruit and swimming in the sea every day. None of this is real: real life, everyday life is not made up of things like these.

And now he talked with another human for the first time in a week, choked over the word _‘friend’,_ and was forced to look at everyday reality again. When you are with a friend, you end up thinking everything you do is legit and right, but when you crash again with the rest of the world you remember how the others want explanations out of you. He doesn’t have those, but because he has no idea of what is happening.

Which. Is kind of the point, isn’t it? He doesn’t have words, because they didn’t talk about it, so he doesn’t know how things are between them. All of this is also kind of not fair: Harry knows nothing about this, why is he obsessing so much in this blind spot of the patio now? How crazy does he look, right now, frozen still and hoping no one sees him while his brain is shifting through so many questions?

He spent years wishing he had this. But is this really what he wanted?

He feels too confused, and he wants to know what Harry thinks about this. He accepted the unfolding of events without stopping and asking himself what was happening, and that was the right thing to do, at the time, but those questions have surfaced now. Now the good thing is asking what is happening.

Everything they’ve done, to Louis, appears as a continuation of who they are. There’s nothing out of the ordinary with what they’re doing, how they are acting. Even when they weren’t together they lived glued to the other, and the few times Louis had pushed his imagination to dream about them as a couple, he had always pictured something similar to this. They’re best friends, first and foremost, after all.

He just needs to know if Harry feels the same things as he does.

He steps inside.

Harry is slouching on the sofa, phone in hand. “Who was that? The postman?”

“The postman? Why would a post- no, it was our neighbor. Just arrived, wanted to say hello.”

Louis looks at him for a second, aware of all the problems he’s creating for himself. Harry has now stood up to go next to him, and is smiling at him, talking about the dessert he wants to try to make and wondering out loud if their neighbors would want some.

While he’s talking, Louis thinks that until now, it felt like they were living in an alternative reality, where he could accept what was happening and not ask himself a damned thing. But now that alternative reality merged back into reality, and Louis has a neighbor. Who knows him. And the real world exists again. 

How does that alternative reality mix again with this one? With Harry smiling at him, touching him on a hip, baking scones just for him?

Like he’s conducting an experiment, Louis gets closer to him, and kisses him softly, slowly. Harry kisses him back immediately, not minding how Louis interrupted him mid-sentence, and smiles against his lips.

Louis deepens the kiss, not feeling like a scientist anymore but more like someone desperately in love, scared that their lover would dissolve if he stopped touching him. Is he going to turn around, once back in London, and realize it wasn’t real? He can’t think about it, he doesn’t want to think about it: he pulls Harry’s hair, delicately, and Harry shudders under his fingers.

Still kissing, he guides him to the sofa, landing on top of him. Harry always trusts him so much, and it makes Louis’ brain melt.

With difficulty, Louis breaks the kiss off, panting on Harry’s lips. Harry raises his head to kiss him again, but Louis sits back a bit on his heels, relaxing on Harry's lap.

Louis observes him: he’s the same guy he has always known. Same eyes so clear Louis had always thought he could see right through them, same dark curls now turning a caramel color because of the sun, same open, trusting expression looking up to him.

“What are we doing?” Louis asks, and his voice is shaking. Maybe he doesn’t want to know the answer. Maybe he wants to drag out this fantasy until he can.

Harry looks surprised, lying down on the dark red cushions. “We can do whatever we want,” he says, stroking Louis’ wrist. “Whatever you want” he adds, and he's so honest it _hurts._

“No,” Louis breaths out. He feels shaken, but he’s sitting perfectly still. “No, I meant… What are we doing? Me and you?” He’s serious, painfully so.

His voice is determined, his expression still, and Harry must understand what he means, because his face gets serious as well.

There’s something in his expression that Louis doesn’t know how to interpret, something behind his eyes he doesn’t know how to read. It shifts, though, before Louis can think about a way to decipher it, and it becomes more neutral.

Harry tries to sit up as well, to meet him halfway, but Louis is still sitting on top of him and straddling him down, so he just props up on his elbows. He tilts his head a bit, stare at him dead in the eyes and says:

“We’re having fun.”

After that, his serious expression transforms into something flirty, a smirk replacing his frown, and he lies down on his back again, looking at him like he’s saying _‘come on now, come back here’_.

Louis has a moment, only a slip of a second, where he thinks, _of course. Of course it’s nothing more._ But since he knows the moment is over and he has to act, in a way or another, he dives back down, kissing him a tad too forcefully. 

He kisses him hard, moving quickly down to his neck, his chest, never taking a breath in between, never wanting to think about what just happened. He just wants to taste him, he just wants to _have fun._

He’s having fun, now, and by the sounds Harry is making, he’d say he’s having fun, too.

And if Louis’ heart is breaking a bit, well, that’s nobody’s business.

~*~

Louis is pretty sure Harry didn’t have noticed his shift in attitude towards him, these last few days: after all, he is more than used to repressing and faking his feelings around him.

Okay, that sounds way too bitter even for him: to be honest, he feels like he doesn’t have anything to fake the vast majority of the time. When they are together the pressure Louis feels over putting a label and feeling more certain about everything they’re doing disappears, getting replaced by pure bliss.

When they are together, even among other people, Louis can perceive this protective film between the two of them and the rest of the world, something that still can make him say that they have their own reality, their own space. But as soon as Harry steps away and Louis can’t see him anymore, he feels like that space collapses on itself.

He feels like an idiot to feel like this, like he’s a baby without the object permanence: as soon as they’re not together, it’s like strangers can infiltrate under this shield and demolish his bliss from within.

And all in all he feels changed, he _does_ feel bitter and disillusioned, and he _does_ think how obvious it was that it was never going to happen how he had always dreamt of.

He had a chat with himself that night, trying to fall asleep under Harry's weight, wondering what he could do about all of this. He had to realize there wasn’t a way to explain his feelings to Harry now and make things clear between them, but neither there was one to mark an end to this: first off, Louis doesn’t want any of this to end, but second, he would have no words to explain why. 

There isn’t anything in the world that he could want more than this, and if _‘having fun’_ is the only way he will ever be able to kiss Harry and hold him while he sleeps, he is going to accept it, and make the best out of it.

A little love is better than none, right?

And _it is,_ because when they are together, oh. They are _explosive._

When they are together, they are the _best._ He can’t picture anything better than them.

He could have never pictured something like this, for them to hit off so well on the physical level, to have no awkwardness between the lines of their friendship and whatever they’re doing.

He had never felt so close and intimate with anyone else, he never got to laugh so hard he felt his belly about to burst, never got that level of trust and understanding.

Like earlier that afternoon, when they went back to bed after lunch with the idea of having a quick nap and then head to the beach, and after half an hour they both got bored of their phones and started bickering again, about absolutely nothing and only with the purpose of railing the other up.

Harry gives in first, of course: Louis had years of experience in resisting him under the belt. He rolls over Louis, pins him down and kisses him until they are both breathless.

Their clothes disappear quickly after that, the only things defined in that twirl of flesh and sweat are their grabbing hands and their hot skin. The air in the room is humid, sweltering, and beads of sweat are adorning their faces.

Louis doesn’t know how, but Harry ends up sitting on his folded thighs, his body crunched over to nibs at Louis’ neck.

“I wan’to suck ya off,” Louis mutters on Harry’s skin, trying to push him off himself to make him lie on the mattress.

Harry shivers under his breath, but doesn’t stop nibbling his neck. Louis closes his eyes, feeling the red, harsh ache growing inside him, and tightens his hold on Harry’s sides: his skin is boiling hot in the still air of the room, sweaty and soft, and Louis wants to touch him everywhere. He wants so _much_.

Harry breaks away from him, his hair stuck to his forehead and his jaw for the sweat, his lips bitten red and his pupils blown: he looks obscene, and if he doesn’t go lie down for him, Louis is going to push him off himself, honestly.

“Or,” Harry slurs, and he sounds as drunk as Louis feels. “Or, we could fuck.”

Louis feels like he’s about to suffocate on his desire. “I-” his brain fogs up and his dick twitches against Harry’s hip.

“You'd like that. You _want_ that,” there’s triumph, almost, in Harry’s voice.

But that’s too much for him. That’s too serious, and, even more importantly:

“We- we don't have... The stuff,” he croaks out, his body shivering.

“The-” Harry bursts out laughing, loudly, and crunches back on Louis’ shoulder.

Louis’ abs are getting tired of holding him up like this, but at the moment he’s too confused to mind that. “What the-”

“The _stuff?”_ Harry squeals, sliding his arms around Louis’ neck to sustain himself. His hips trust on Louis’ ones, and Louis can feel his sweat running down his back. He wants Harry _off_ himself and onto the _mattress_ , thanks, but Harry is still giggling in his right ear. “You make it sound like... Like it's a decoupage project.”

Louis laughs, too, but when Harry starts again he feels like he _has to_ tell him: “Okay, _stop_ now.”

It comes out in a grunt, his breath short for all the kissing they’ve been doing and the temperature of the room, which. Of course just makes them both start laughing again, so hard now they’re both shaking in each other’s arms.

Louis is too endeared to feel exasperated, and starts kissing Harry’s collarbone again just to ease the pain that’s growing inside him. Harry’s skin tastes salty, both because of the seawater and for his own sweat, and it makes Louis dizzy with _want._

“Sorry if I take that stuff seriously,” he mutters, traveling to Harry’s chest. “But if we don’t have lube we… we can’t.”

He’s not proud to say this, but when he was much younger and much poorer, he and a boyfriend of the time had used conditioner, once. It wasn’t great, Louis wouldn’t recommend it. Louis cringes at the thought of doing that with someone he cares about as much as Harry.

Harry grunts, seemingly complying to the concept, and Louis continues, lips to the top of his sternum, on the divot between his collarbones: “and… I don’t wanna use random stuff and-”

“Oh my god oh my god oh my god,” Harry straightens his body out of Louis grasps, and starts laughing _again._ Louis is so fucking done with him. “You- oh my _god,_ you know what-” his face is all scrunched up, his eyes _closed_ for how much he’s laughing now. He’s shaking on Louis’ lap, and somehow that is still doing everything to Louis’ hunger.

“Wha...?”

He’s at a loss for words. What the hell is happening?

Harry tries to take a breath, and then says, still in a fit of giggles: “You know... Ancient Greeks, right?”

Louis’ arms left his middle. _What the fuck_. Harry loses his balance and ends up with his bum on the mattress, _finally_.

“H,” he says, trying to be stern despite his whole heart bleeding love for this weirdo and every other part of his body begging him to do something about how Harry is now sprawled under him, his legs still wrapped around him. “I wanted to suck you off, why are you talking about-”

“I’m not stopping you,” he cuts him off, smirking, _that fucking bastard_.

Well. “Okay then.”

Louis pushes him down completely, thrusting his shoulder to the mattress, and starts kissing and nibbling his skin again. _Finally._

“Okay but! Let me say this!!” Why is Harry still talking, why does he still have laughter in his voice, Louis is going to _bite_ him. And not in a sexy way. “You know how we always say, Ancient Greeks cared about their olive oil and all that?”

Louis’ lips still near Harry’s hip. Something in his own brain is connecting. 

“Wait,” he gasps, raising his head. “Don't tell me that-”

“ _Yeah_!” Harry _screams,_ propping up on an elbow. “They used that as lube, can you believe-”

“Is this what they teach you in Uni?”

Harry giggles again, collapsing onto the pillows. “Yeah. I have a degree in gay sex across the cultures and the centuries.” Pause. “Comes in hand, as you can see,” he laughs again.

Louis gets up on his hands and knees and moves to meet Harry’s lips again, if anything to shut him up for good. Harry kisses him back with enthusiasm, his hands in Louis’ hair immediately, grabbing him and dragging him down on top of him.

“Can I continue doing what I came here for, now?” Louis teases, breathing on his lips.

Harry smirks. “Still not stopping you.”

“You- fucking- cunt-” Louis punctuates every word with a kiss, and moves down again.

His mouth goes fast, this time around, not interested in wasting time exploring Harry’s body, in the dreadful chance Harry will find something else to say or to laugh about. Louis pushes Harry's waist down, biting his hip before going any further.

And continues.

~*~

The orange light of the late afternoon filters in the room, making everything look soft and cozy. It’s late. Maybe they’ll go see the sunset on the beach again, hoping today it will give Harry the pink sea he longs to see.

The peachy glow wraps around them and reflects on the pale walls and on the pink blanket Harry had found in one of the closets and insisted on using the night before, arguing how cold it was (it wasn’t, it’s still mid-August). 

They’re still naked from before, no intention of moving or getting clothes on. Harry is lying sideways, with his back to the bedsheets and his legs bent; Louis is resting his head on his stomach, looking at his thighs. Harry’s hand is in his hair, massaging his scalp, and Louis’ hand is tracing patterns on the inside of his right thigh. Louis can hear his every breath, his every heartbeat.

This, too, is intimate. Special.

Looking, observing, appreciating each other and the time they have. Existing so tangled and so bare with no further intention than being in the same space. They’ve been lying there for a while, now, chatting and changing their position every once in a while. They’ve found this one a while ago, and they’ve been lying like this since. Like two puzzle pieces.

There’s a tiger tattoo on Harry's upper left thigh, and Louis is displeased to see it there, both because he has always thought that tattoo in particular was a bit ugly and not well sketched, but especially now because it blocks Harry's pale skin.

He’s studying him, trying to pay attention to every detail: the way his skin folds where his thighs meet his hips, the curves of his legs and his every little mole. It’s like he’s trying to commit him to memory.

Louis is caressing Harry’s inner thigh, noticing how soft his body hair is there. It’s fuzzy, thin. He wonders if Harry would have shaven, if he knew they would have ended up like this. Not because Louis would want him to, but just because sometimes he does.

He’s glad he didn’t, because he enjoys how it feels under his fingertips. He observes how his body hair changes and transforms around his body, how it’s thin and almost blonde around his hips and upper thighs, and how it becomes thicker and darker going down his legs, or around his dick, that’s now resting between his legs, unbothered.

It’s obvious to state like this, but he never saw this part of him, not for so long. He never had the opportunity to learn how he looks, to look at every inch of this part of Harry's body that is always covered, even with his short shorts. He never got to notice how his tan lines fade around his hips and how his body changes. 

Sometimes, with his tracing, Louis accidentally tickles Harry, who always giggles softly, his hand stopping for a second in Louis’ hair. And every time Louis feels his laughter resound in his stomach, Louis’ left ear pressed to Harry’s abs. Those are the only moments where he remembers they own separate bodies, and they aren’t, in fact, fused, amalgamated in one.

Turtledoves are cooing outside, rarely joined by seagulls’ cries. The rumble of the sea doesn’t arrive at their ears, meaning today it’s flat, calm, like the gentle light and warmth shining on them, like their lazy movements and soft laughs.

Harry stills his hand. “Lou?” he calls, somehow still not breaking the silence of the room.

“Yeah?”

Time stretches out. “Can you… Can you tell me why you like mathematics so much?”

There’s another pause. Louis frowns the tiniest little bit, and Harry starts again with the soft scratches. “H, you asked me this a million times.”

“Can you please tell me once more?”

“I mean… sure.” He feels like he should roll the other way, to look him in the eyes instead of keep looking at his legs, but it feels more intimate to talk like this. “Okay, uh… what do you want to know?” Louis could talk for hours about mathematics, and it’s something he actually did, once or twice. 

Harry hums. “Anything you want to tell me.”

Louis pokes him on his right hip. “I can tell you about… how beautiful it is? Like, aesthetically?”

“No, you already told me this,” he replies in a beat, sure.

 _But didn’t you say…_ Louis smiles. He had already said everything to him. “Like, how simple is it? How happy it makes me?” he tries again.

“You told me about this too.”

 _Uh._ Louis rests his hand on the outside of Harry’s thigh, still. He’s so warm. “What about how it always makes so much sense? How it always gives you an answer?”

Harry’s hand stops for a second, like he’s pondering this route, then starts scratching again. “Yeah, tell me about this.”

Louis stills, too, taking his time to think about it. He knows what he wants to say, and he wants to say it right.

“It’s one of my favorite things about it,” he starts with, pressing with his thumb on Harry’s skin. “When… when you have a problem, in front of you, no matter how difficult it will be, you can feel safe knowing that probably there is a solution, and you probably have the tools to get there. And if you don’t have them you can acquire them. Nothing is out of reach for you. And when you spend as much time as I do, looking at problems and studying them, you can automatically break down every problem in a set of steps and of… techniques? Yeah, that you could use to solve it. You can almost see those, and it’s… Beautiful, and so… Heartening? Almost?” Louis wonders if he sounds insane. He is aware his outlook is not a vastly shared one, but he's so sure that math could be a lifeline for anyone. That’s part of the reason why he would love to be a teacher, even more than an _astro something,_ as Harry had said. Except that teachers make no money, and right now he craves his independence too much to sacrifice it; he’s sure, though, that in a couple of years he’ll go back to his roots.

“It’s so special to see that there are so many ways to come to a solution, and that solution always exists,” he continues. “And it gives me so much peace of mind, because in real life it doesn’t go like that. So many things that don’t make any sense and will never do, no matter how unjust they are,” he’s struggling in keeping his voice steady, because he believes so intensely in this. “Math will always make me feel safe. Because even problems that don’t have a solution, they have a meaning after them, nothing is left to chance. And all this order is so… soothing. It always makes you take a step back and appreciate the harmony of… things. Of everything.”

His words dim, to then die down in the still air of the room.

Harry is silent, still scratching his scalp. Louis wants so badly to turn around and look at him, try to figure out what he’s thinking, why he asked him that, but doesn’t want to disrupt this moment.

Harry’s reply arrives after another minute of silence, and his voice sounds quivering.

“But why… You need so badly for things to make sense? Because… Not everything always makes sense, but that’s alright too.” His words tremble, uncertain.

“Yeah, I know, but that’s why I like math. Even if it’s something you can’t directly apply to reality, it’s still something that reminds me there’s an order. A harmony, and-”

“No, no, but I got that. I got what you mean,” Harry cuts him off, not unkindly. “What I meant was, in real life, why do you still feel the need to make everything conform to a precise scheme?” He still sounds precarious, but there’s more stability in his voice now.

Louis stops his tracing. He stops breathing, too.

Because it’s obvious, it’s completely obvious that he’s not talking about math anymore. He never was. He's talking about the two of them.

Maybe he did notice the shift in Louis’ attitude, after all, maybe he became aware of it after Louis’ question the other day. Does that matter now? It doesn’t. Harry got to see right through him once again, leaving him hanging.

“I don’t know. I think it’s simpler to face things when they fit inside a category. You know better how to confront them. You know what to do with them.” His voice is thin now, knowing he’s having a discussion where there’s no compromise point between them.

“Yeah, okay, but there aren’t enough categories for everything, and making a new one for everything ends up going against the purpose itself of it, and-”

“Yeah, I know that,” Louis croaks out. He’s sure there is a name for this paradox, but his mind is reeling too much right now for him to remember it.

“So, don’t you see that… It’s useless to force things in a category where they don’t fit, just so you know better how to face them? Not everything has a solution. Not everything makes sense, and that’s alright too. That’s reality, too.”

Harry doesn’t seem to notice how uncomfortable Louis is getting. Or that, or he needs to express this, and wants this situation to be clear between them. His circular motions are clumsy, now, like he’s too focused explaining how he feels to keep scratching Louis’ scalp like he was before.

Louis wants to cry. He feels like he could be genuinely close to crying, right now.

“I just… I like things that are neat,” he says again, to no use, because they’re not meeting at any middle point, there. He wants security, a certainty that Harry can’t give to him. Don’t want to give it to him.

Louis wants his clothes back on, now. He doesn’t want to remain in this moment that’s just an ugly, empty shell of what it was minutes before.

“I think…” Harry’s voice lingers, and it feels softer than before. It doesn’t make Louis feel any better, though, it just makes him feel like Harry knows what he’s doing and saying to him. It’s reminding him how he always had the upper hand on him. “I think you should try to appreciate the freedom of things that can’t be tamed down.”

Louis nods the best he can, still lied down, trying to show he has understood what Harry is saying.

He feels a growing weight on his stomach and heart. He can’t breathe properly anymore. The light in the room is always the same, the muffled sounds too, but those moments, the _before and after,_ feel light years apart.

He just wants to put his clothes back on, go downstairs and have a cigarette. He didn’t even bring those here.

He can recognize a rejection when he has one in front of his eyes, and knows Harry just told him: _“I know you want a relationship, but we do not fit into something like that”_. And Louis has to accept it. He can’t do anything other than accept it.

He has to accept that Harry knows he still wants him as he wanted him years ago, and once again he’s telling him it’s not going to happen.

They’re not what Louis wants them to be. What he always hoped for.

Once again, none of this is real.

~*~

They’re sitting on the cold sand again, watching the sunset.

This time around the sea is completely flat, calm, and everything around them is painted with pale pink and lilac tones. Birds without a name fly in flocks above the sea, beyond the horizon, just small black dots against the pale sky.

The beach is packed with people today, all taking pictures of the washed sunset, screaming, playing volleyball, swimming for the last time of the day.

Louis is staring at the horizon, feeling like none of their sounds arrive at his ears. The external world feels muted once again, with Harry’s shoulder pressed on his.

They’re the same, he and the sea. He has always known, but he can see it so clearly now: always in the same place, coming and going but never leaving.

He drops a kiss on Harry’s shoulder, thinking nothing of the people around them. It wouldn’t matter anyway.

Louis raises his eyes to look at him. Harry's eyes are twinkling with happiness, looking at the sea splashing lazily on the shore. His shoulders are relaxed, a sincere, private smile open on his face.

Louis knows what is between them is special, and knows, as much as the sea does, that he won’t leave it behind, once they’ll go back to the city. He will never love anyone as much as he loves him right now.

([x](https://www.instagram.com/p/B97bDYuhoJP/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link))

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll post the last one tomorrow! Let me know if you're liking the story so far, and thank you for reading ♡♡♡


	5. Chapter 5

Louis got tired of feeling bitter, and has decided to just ignore everything that would make him sad and appreciate what he has.

Which, honestly, is a lot. Sitting on opposite ends of the couch with their legs intertwined in the middle, while they’re both minding their own business, just existing at the same time? That’s precious. He wants to keep this memory, and so many more, as pure as they are while he lives them.

He had tried to intercept if there were any changes in Harry's manner towards him, but couldn't get much. Harry seemed apparently satisfied after their talk, and Louis wonders if at any point they’ll have a serious conversation about all of this, or at least something more direct than using math as a metaphor, or if they’ll go back home and ignore everything that has happened.

He knows that, despite his efforts, he is still spending too much time obsessing over _what will happen,_ but he can’t let any of this go. When their private bubble closes on itself, he mentally projects them in the future, with too many questions and no answers at all.

The pressure is there, even for the most stupid things: Harry is going to drive him home, since the car is his, but how will they say goodbye? Will they kiss, as they do now, never thinking about it twice? Or will they say bye, turn around and not see each other for another six months?

Because... Yeah. Well, of course it was Louis’ fault, for those six months of radio silence, but he won’t tackle _that_ other elephant in the room if Harry won’t ask him about it. He knows he’s a coward, but he sees no point in humiliating himself even further.

Because he got what Harry had said.

What they have, here, is nice, but there’s no point in trying to understand what it is, or trying to put a name on it, because it won’t survive once they’ll have left this corner of the world where no one knows them. 

So, life goes on.

They keep going to the beach, getting tan, watching movies with the volume still up and laughing too much. They keep kissing at any moment, always touching in a way or another, having so much sex and sleeping in each other’s arms afterward.

And in all of this, Louis can’t help but think, _wouldn’t it be sweet if things stayed the same._

But time goes on, and they keep on seeing the sun going down on the sea and back up behind them, so, before they know it, they have only two days before going back to London, and Louis is trying to cling on every moment they’re sharing, and on every positive thing he can think of doing once they’ll be back and he will be alone again.

Like, thinking about furnishing his empty apartment, for example.

His mind goes immediately back to the lad sitting in front of him: he’s still reading that Jane Austen’s book, and by the smile on his face, he’s finding it particularly amusing.

It’s late, but the sun is not gone yet. Louis is going to miss this, too, out of this summer: how it felt like to have the sun always with them. They should make dinner but they’re not in the mood, so they’re both sitting there, coexisting. Louis presses down with his leg on Harry’s one, who raises his head to look at him. Once their eyes lock, Harry blows him a kiss and goes back reading.

Louis suppresses a groan, and smiles like a fool by himself.

Harry would love to go furniture hunting with him. Could Louis ask him that, though? He will have to discover that in a week or two, if he’ll cut off every tie with him once again or not. Feels weird, and sad, to know their friendship almost has an expiring date.

Something happier is that, as weird as it sounds, he wants to go back to work. Niall told him he owed him one, and he wants to go to some pub with him and forget about all of this mess. And, honestly? He likes his job. It’s not his dream job, he doesn’t give a damn about coding, but he gets paid so well he wouldn’t dream of complaining about it. Sometimes it's even fun, and his colleagues are nice and his own age.

While they’re doing their activities in silence, a loud notification disrupts the comfortable quiet of the living room: it’s Louis’ work ringtone, they both recognize the sound of it by now.

“Are they really sending you emails at dinner time?” Harry mumbles, sounding annoyed.

“It’s just Niall,” Louis lies. He's not in the mood to argue. He opens the email, and it’s not anything bad: just some guidelines for a project they will start soon. He doesn’t even need to read it.

Harry snorts, but he doesn’t sound amused. “Does he need a hand again?” He’s not raising his eyes from the book, but it’s obvious he’s not reading anymore.

The yellow light from the lamp is mixed with the low sun from outside, and sitting there, Harry looks fresh out of a baroque painting. If it wasn’t for his pointed tone, Louis would have leaned over him to kiss him.

Instead, he frowns. “What’s the problem with me texting Niall? He's my friend, I've told you.”

Harry’s eyes remain glued to the page. “It’s just like, you know, it’s weird that you have friends I never knew anything about.” He's bitter, Louis has never heard him using this tone with him.

 _Oh. He didn’t think about that._ He knows it’s his fault. There’s no point in denying it, and maybe he should start apologizing for the things he has done.

“I know, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you anything about this job or the people in it,” he starts, gently, and at that Harry raises his head. He looks surprised, like he wasn’t expecting Louis to admit his faults. “If you want, when we’ll be back in London, I’ll introduce you to them,” Louis continues, offering him a smile.

Harry frowns again. He is back to being annoyed, Louis realizes, and he has no clue as to _why_.

“Yeah, sure, if I _want_ to,” he mocks him, going back to his book.

Louis is at a loss for words. _What is happening?_ “What… What is the problem now?”

Harry closes his book and places it on the ground, removing his legs from where they were leaned over Louis’ ones. Immediately, Louis feels cold.

“Why wouldn’t I want to? They’re your friends. Of course I want to meet them.” His words should be comforting, but he’s spitting them out, still annoyed. “If you still consider me someone worth spending time around, that’s it.”

“Harry, what the _fuck_ are you talking about?” Louis is gaping, his legs folded in front of his chest now. He didn’t want to yell, but the words came out directly from his chest.

Harry clenches his jaw, his eyes narrow. He’s almost angry, and Louis doesn’t understand how they went from two minutes ago to _this._

“I just…” he’s frowning, but he doesn’t sound mean anymore. Just lost. “I feel like I don't know you anymore.” Louis feels a sharp pain in his left chest at that. “And I…” he sighs. “Let’s not talk about this,” he concludes, picking up his book again.

Louis stares at him. Harry stares at his book, still not reading a single word.

“You drop a bomb like that and now you’re saying you don’t wanna talk about it?” Louis chews out, once he regained the ability to speak.

 _What the fuck._ Harry’s words bounce in his brain. _I don’t know you anymore_ goes on a loop in his ears.

Harry looks at him again. They stare into each other’s eyes, unmoving. “Yes.” His voice is cold. “I mean… we go back to London in two days. I just don’t wanna argue now.” It almost got to pleading, at the end. Harry goes back to his book, signaling the conversation is over.

Louis remains there, staring at him for another couple of seconds, unable to move. Do they… think the same thing? That they want to experience, enjoy every positive thing they have here, because their paradise will be over soon?

But Louis doesn’t know Harry’s perspective on this. He could be just projecting what he would love to hear, instead of what is true. He could ask, but:

“Okay then,” is everything he says, aware he’s saying _‘let’s bury this other one and ignore our problems’._

Harry doesn’t give him any signs he has heard him, so he tries to go back to relaxing, but it’s impossible with Harry's words pounding in his skull. _If you still consider me someone worth spending time around,_ he had told him, as if Harry is not the most important person in his life. Does he really think that? Did Louis really manage to make him believe that? 

He can’t concentrate on anything else, so he stands up to take his laptop and read what he was just sent. Maybe he can do something productive while his mind is reeling.

Harry follows his every movement, still sitting on the sofa. When he realizes what Louis is about to do, he huffs, irked:

“Lou, for fuck’s sake. What are you-”

“I just wanna read something,” Louis muttered back, equally annoyed now, feeling scolded. “I’m not gonna work.”

Harry doesn’t seem satisfied with the answer. “I just don't understand why are you doing this job, out of everything you could-”

Louis sits down at the table, opening his laptop. He wonders, irritated, how Harry pretends Louis to drop what is bothering him but keeps asking him about this. “How many times did you ask me this?”

“And how many did you respond?” _Uh, touché._ “Lou,” and he doesn’t sound mean anymore, just sad. “You're too smart to sit down at a desk and file coding for the rest of your life.”

“Why would I do that for the rest of my life?” Louis asks, baffled. “It's just a job that I found that's good for now.”

“You had projects-”

“Yeah, and I don't have money for those.”

Harry frowns, displeased. “You wanted to get a PhD. You could apply for a scholarship.”

God, that sounds so _easy,_ doesn’t it? But it’s not. He can’t afford the _time_ to get a PhD now. “How smart do you think I am?” he just mumbles back, typing in his password.

“Enough to win one with no problems,” Harry replies instantly, as if he has never been as sure about anything as he is of this.

Louis stares at the loading screen. It’s making him melancholic, having this conversation, thinking about what he could have had. “I... Don't get why you're so invested in this. It's not a big deal. It's just a job,” he says, softly. It’s just a place he goes forty hours per week, doing something he doesn’t give a damn about. It’s not _that_ bad.

He knows Harry is looking at him, his book closed on his lap. He can feel his sympathetic sad expression even without looking directly at him.

“You wanted to win a Fields Medal," Harry whispers, almost to his own lap, and for some reason Louis finds that funny.

 _Funny._ Life changed so much since he was that young boy going around saying he wanted a Fields Medal.

Louis snorts, but it’s not a happy sound. “Every math kid who has seen Good Will Hunting wants to win one.”

"You could." 

Okay, Louis can't do this. He can't sit here and listen to his friend hinting at something he's not understanding, while reminding him of everything he has renounced to. He turns to look at him, and he finds him mirroring his position, facing him with a serious expression on. 

"Haz?" he tries. "Tell me what's bugging you. Come on."

"You…" he shakes his head. "I'm not the point here. I just want to understand how it's possible that someone as smart as you are, with so many dreams as you had, ended up like the ones we used to make fun of. The people who are boring and done with life at twenty-five. With a desk job. Not even trying."

Not even trying? _Him?_ Louis sees red. 

“I've tried!” He burst. “And yeah, you're right, I like astronomy and I could do something with that, I love teaching and I love kids so I could do that, too, but guess what? It's a bloodbath to get into a space agency, especially if you don’t have any experience, and teachers don't make any money. At all,” he states, with gritted teeth. 

He has spent sleepless nights thinking about all of this, over and over again, about every possibility. And he _did_ arrive at a conclusion. If Harry doesn’t like that, well, it’s not his life to live.

He does look incredibly disappointed now, though.

“So you did it for the money? That's... That's even worse.” His pity is getting replaced with disapproval, and Louis wonders if he even realizes what he’s saying.

“You wouldn't speak like that if you ever had serious problems with money before,” he snarls back. He looks at his laptop: the program is ready, but he doesn’t have the peace of mind to read or work on anything, now. “Listen, I'm getting old-”

“You're twenty-six?”

 _Almost twenty-seven. Spent almost a fifth of that in love with you._ “I am.” He doesn’t know if he’s trying to prove his worth to Harry now, or if he’s just pissed and wants him to have some perspective about what his life is. “And they pay me so well, and I wanted my house, I wanted my spaces-”

“Want _ed?_ But…” Harry cuts him off, looking confused now. “You told me you came here on holiday ‘cos you couldn’t afford anything else?”

God, Louis didn’t tell him he got an _apartment_ just for himself. He knows that’s big news, that’s something worth a party or two over. He’s a shitty friend, and he knows this is the worst time to break the news.

“Yeah I mean…” he clears his throat. Harry is still sitting on the couch, but he’s now leaning over, with his elbows resting on his knees, trying to understand what Louis is saying. “I just said that. I _needed_ a place for myself. And I got one." Harry gasps. He honestly gasps out loud. "I couldn't stay in that flat with my six roommates, I wanted a place where I could grow old with someone. I _needed_ that, because…” he lets the words hang in the air between them.

He doesn’t want to explain to Harry, among any human on earth, how much he desires and _wants_ to date, yeah, but also grow old with someone, to have a place just for him and his love. It was fundamental, in his stupid _‘let’s-get-over-Harry’_ plan, to go out, find someone, date, the whole lot. Prove the world he was a solid lad, with a serious job, his own place, maybe even a dog if he found the time. Find himself someone who would have appreciated all of that. 

Harry, in front of him, has been blinking for an awful amount of time. It’s not just that: he looks stricken. Stunned. Well, that seems excessive, his Louis’ eyes.

“Shit Louis, do you…” his eyes are crystal clear, his voice shaky. “Do you have a boyfriend?”

It takes a second for Louis to understand what Harry means, and two more to find the words to respond.

“No. I clearly don't.”

He shuts his laptop close, stands up and marches towards the door.

Did Harry seriously ask him if he had a boyfriend, back in London? If Louis ghosted him for months because of that, if Louis left said boyfriend in the city to have a random fling with a friend on the side? Who the fuck does he think he is?

He tears the door open, ready to go wherever it’s not in the same room with him, when Harry grabs him by an arm.

“Where- where are you going? What's-”

Louis doesn’t even look at him. “Let me go,” he growls, shaking his arm off Harry’s grip. Harry doesn’t let him go, and that makes Louis even angrier.

“Lou, Lou _is,_ what the fuck-”

“Listen,” Louis says, voice as calm as possible. He’s shaking with anger, and he knows he’s acting like he’s crazy, but he doesn’t care. “I have neighbors, and I don't want them to hear us. So, let me _go.”_

“Letting you go?” Harry’s eyes are wide open, shocked. He tightens his grip, and it makes Louis furious. “Where the fuck are you going, what is happening? What just happened, Lou, I don’t underst-”

“You know too well.” He moves across the garden, and Harry follows him along, still squeezing him. It makes him feel like a badly behaved kid, and it irks him even more. “Fuck, let me go, I just want to have a walk by myself, okay? Can I do that or what?”

“I know too well?” Harry ignores him, getting more confused each word Louis throws at him. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“I'm not in the mood. Let me go, I swear.”

Harry is starting to get angry as well. “You always do this-”

Louis reaches the gate. At this point he doesn’t care if all their neighbors hear them, he just wants to go the fuck away and stay ten minutes alone. He needs his space.

“I'm going,” he keeps saying, not looking back at Harry, who’s still glued to him.

Harry yanks his arm, to make him turn around to look at him.

“Maybe you honestly think you're talking, but you're not,” he’s properly angry, now, his voice deeper, his jaw clenched. “You always do this, you always fucking _do this._ I never know what's up with you, you never talk clearly, I always have to fucking decipher you and-”

“At least I don't make people believe what they want, just to leave again,” he almost yells, struggling to keep being collected.

“Leaving?” Harry lets his arm go, finally. It doesn’t feel like a victory, when he’s yelling as much as he’s doing now. “I am the one leaving? Do you think I left you? Do you think I was the one who did the leaving? What the fuck, Louis, _what the fuck,”_ he’s shaking, furious.

“You know what I'm talking about. You _know,”_ Louis repeats, accusatory, because it’s not fucking fair how Harry gets to keep his mask intact, while trying to ruin Louis’. If he’s a liar, then they both are.

“See?” Harry roars again, flailing his arms around. “You're talking by yourself. I have no idea what you mean!”

Louis can’t do this. He doesn’t _want_ to do any of this.

“Good luck with that. I'm going.” he yanks the gate open. “Don't come after me, don't call me. Leave me the fuck alone for ten minutes.”

“I still don't know what happened,” Harry calls behind him, still riled up, but staying in his place.

“That's your problem mate,” Louis yells without looking back. “See ya later.”

He walks down the narrow road, quickly but not running. He needs to go to the sea. He needs to look at the infinity and calm down. He needs to rationalize what just happened.

He knows he’s acting up. He knows he acted like he was crazy, he blew things out of proportion, but he can’t believe Harry. He can’t fucking believe him and what he told him.

Was he serious? Did he seriously think Louis had someone and was fucking him in his free time? As _if_ it’s Louis the one who plans on forgetting about him the second they’ll be back home, and not the opposite? As if Louis did anything but cherish him and their every moment together and basically told him he wanted something more concrete between them? As if it wasn’t Harry the one who told him they were having fun, that there was no need to put a name on what they were doing?

He keeps walking fast, not sparing a glance at the lovely little houses he and Harry spent days observing and complimenting. He knows it wasn’t fair to have snapped like that out of the blue, he _knows._ But he also knows they have their days countered, here, and when they'll be back they won't have any of this anymore.

This fairytale will end and he will end up worse than he has ever felt. He will lose Harry again, and for real this time.

But it still wasn't fair to yell as he did: Harry looked genuinely confused. Maybe he really didn't understand what happened between them, but-

No. Harry is not stupid. He must have known more than he let on, Louis is sure of that.

Probably for him this was a summer moment, two weeks of friends with benefits that wouldn’t need any extra explanation. Something fun, with no strings attached.

Maybe he doesn't even remember what Louis told him, when he confessed his love for him that night: it's been years, they were drunk, Harry left immediately after.

But.

But then Harry got a boyfriend, and he made a point of looking Louis dead in the eyes when introducing him to their friend group. He knew what he was doing, back then. And you don’t forget doing something like that to your best friend, right?

Maybe he just thought Louis got over him, and Louis wouldn’t blame him for that. Who gets so hung up about their best friend and manages to not let a single word out for years? And Louis prided himself, almost, in how good he became in hiding his true feelings. Still, in these past days he’s sure he didn’t hide a damn thing.

He arrives at the beach, but he can see even from a distance how that’s still packed, despite the sunset approaching fast: it’s mid-August and the entire population of Southern England is there, it seems.

He turns left and goes to the special place he used to hang out when he was young. It’s not a beach, it’s just an opening on the sea by some rocks. It’s impossible to swim there: the water there is deep, the current is always too strong and once you dive in it’s impossible to go back up.

When he was younger there were an awful lot of stories about kids drowning there, but he never discovered if those were true. Couples usually go there to make out in peace, but thankfully, when Louis arrives, he finds it empty.

He sits down, looking at the sea. He’s completely alone, and he wants to scream. He knows he could, here, hiding from everyone else, but he’s scared that if he starts, he’s not going to stop. 

The sea is angry, it always is here, much more than on the beach: high waves crash on the rocks, spluttering white foam everywhere. It’s growling, it’s screaming like an animal and Louis, again, thinks how similar they are.

It doesn’t matter what will happen, how many opportunities life will offer him: Louis will remain there waiting for something that’s not going to happen, just like the sea that goes back and forth, again and again, for eternity. No way out, no chance to ever change.

He feels like his love for Harry moves as the sea does. Back and forth, but always there, always back at it.

Louis had moments where he pulled back, where he thought he could change his path, fall out of love, find someone else or at least some _thing_ else and live his life without this constant heartache. But, every single time, he went back to it, stronger than before. And he’s still there. He’s still here, years later, hopelessly in love.

Now that they’re here, Louis and the sea, and Louis, too, is crashing on these rocks, screaming in the wind, with no one out there who will listen to him.

This time around Louis knows there is no way back. He went too far, got too close to the real thing: he got to know how it is to kiss Harry everywhere, to fall asleep with him, to make coffee for him in the morning. He let himself dream that was their life.

He let himself go. How will he ever be able to go back to London now? How will he be able to forget about all of this, to ignore him again?

Louis stares at the sea.

The sea offers no comfort to him, except reminding him he’s not alone.

And maybe, just maybe, for Louis at this moment that’s enough.

~*~

The sun has long gone when Louis gets back home, but the sky is not completely dark yet.

Harry is sitting on the patio, waiting for him and scrolling on his phone. As soon as Louis opens the gate, he puts that into his pocket, and stands up to walk to him.

Louis closes the gate after himself, and turns around to find Harry staring at him. He’s shivering with cold, and would rather have whatever argument Harry wants inside, with some dry clothes on.

“I called Zayn,” Harry says after a couple of beats of silence. His eyes are buggering off, his fingers twitching.

“Okay,” is all Louis replies. He trusts Zayn too much, he knows he wouldn’t reveal anything to him.

“He didn’t tell me anything personal about you, he-”

“I know he wouldn’t,” Louis interrupts him, and it feels mean. It feels like he’s saying, _‘he’s still my friend, and I know he would pick me over you, any day’._ They look at each other for a bit in silence. “I’m cold,” Louis mutters, and he goes inside without looking back.

“I just- Lou, I didn’t know what to do, so I called him.” Harry is following him inside the house.

Louis takes off his shirt soaked in seawater splutters and throws it on the couch, slipping on a hoodie he finds near the living room table. Then, he walks to the kitchen: he got hungry, while wallowing in his misery.

“He didn’t say anything personal,” Harry continues, following him from room to room. “But he told me to think about this, and what happened. And about you in general.”

Louis still doesn’t turn around. He is terrified, honestly, because he knows how this is going to end. He knew this was going to happen, but it’s still a lot to tackle while he’s still shivering from the cold and he’s rummaging into the fridge.

“Okay.”

“Can you… Louis. Can you please look at me?” Harry’s voice is still stern, but he sounds as worn out as Louis feels. “Can we talk about… this?”

Louis closes the fridge empty-handed and turns around. He knows Harry can read how scared he is in his eyes. Still, he doesn’t say anything: he wouldn’t have an idea of where to start. He’s still holding all his cards too close to his chest to bare them out.

Harry, too, looks tired. His fingers haven’t stopped twitching yet, Louis notices. That only happens when he’s really, really nervous. For some reason, it makes him feel better: at least he’s not the only one who wants this to be over with.

“Okay,” Harry sighs when he gets that Louis is not going to say anything. “Okay, I’ll start.” They move together, as by tacit agreement, in the living room.

“When you invited me here, I thought you were gonna tell me why you didn’t call back _once_ in six months,” he starts, struggling to keep his voice even. “But we go back to London in two days, less than forty-eight hours, so it feels safe to say that you’ll keep ignoring it, unless _I_ ask you about that. Which is what I’m trying to do, because I don't want us to go back and have you continue ignoring me. I can't do it again, not after… this.” His eyes are fixed to the ground, and Louis wonders how much of _‘this’_ Harry said coincides with his own.

“And, Lou, I… I need an explanation about that. About those months. For the longest time I thought I did something terrible to you and couldn’t remember.” He grimaces. “Your friends didn’t help me, either, just said you were busy with… your new job, your new life,” he moves his hand around, going to lean on a wall. He truly looks exhausted.

“But, Lou… We made projects together, do you even remember that? We had so many plans for us, sketched out, with every detail of our lives, and how we were going to live them. We used to dream about doing things together. And then you... Got your degree and left,” his voice cracks on the last words, and Louis can’t bear to look at him, how tired and hurt he is. “Left the uni, and left me with it. You didn't pick up your phone anymore, not for me. We spent six months in the same city and we never got to see each other,” he takes a deep breath in, and continues.

“You forgot about me the second you didn't have to spend your time on campus with me,” he says, and somehow it doesn’t sound as accusing as it should. It’s still more crushed than anything else. “And… and then you called me to come here, because none of your other friends would do it. How do you think I felt?” His voice got stronger, and Louis knows he’s looking at him right now, but his eyes are still fixed on the ground, heart hopping in his chest. “I would have done anything for you. Still do. But I… I know there’s something you’re not telling me, not now and not six months ago,” he’s back to whispering. “And I don’t know if our… Friendship can… Go through something like that again. If it can survive, if we ignore all of this again.”

Louis nods. He doesn’t know for which line in particular, but he still nods.

He agrees with what Harry said: they should talk about this, to the very least for the sake of being friends. The elephants in the room multiplicated, and now they’re so big and so many they’re pushing Harry and Louis out, forcing them to find a solution. Louis would have never thought his bond with Harry, as special as it is, would have stretched thin to this point.

In all this dwelling, he’s remaining silent, near the wall opposite to Harry’s, the whole room between them. The more he doesn’t speak, the more he doesn’t know what to say.

When he walked out in that theatrical manner, almost an hour ago, he did it because he had so much to say, so many words trapped in his throat he felt like he could’ve gone crazy if he stayed still. But right now all that rage is gone, and it’s replaced with defeat. When this night will end, Harry will know how much he had lied to him, and everything will be over.

He bites the inside of his cheek and stares at the ground.

“Can you say something? Anything at all?” Harry is miffed, but there’s still a note of pleading in his tone. “Don’t you think you owe me that, to the least?”

“I don’t know what to say,” Louis starts with, and that’s the truth. “Because… come on. You know why,” he doesn’t like what he’s saying as it goes out of his mouth: he’s just shifting blame. “You know why I didn’t call you and why-”

“You see? This is what I mean when I say you talk without saying anything, because I have no fucking clue of what you mean.”

“Okay.” Louis walks closer to him, and looks him straight in the eyes. “Listen to me. Look at me.” Their eyes lock, and Louis knows they can both feel the tension in the air. “Don’t make me say it,” he states, clearly, slowly.

Harry’s lip wobbles, genuine distress in his eyes. “But why not? Don’t you know you could say anything you want to me, and I’d still be here for you?”

He’s too honest, too genuine, too good. Louis can’t do this.

“I know I _can,_ but that doesn’t mean I _want_ to,” he mutters, looking away, and he honest to god feels like a bratty teenager.

“Lou, please, fuck. What is happening?”

“I’ve already told you,” he repeats, because that is true. He already did. “So, please, don’t make me say it again. Don’t make me be that stupid all over again.” He feels he could be close to begging.

“Oh.” A flash of recognition crosses Harry’s eyes, and all Louis can think of is, _you see that you know what I’m saying?_

Harry nods to himself, eyes absent, far away.

“You know,” he starts, much more softly than before. “I’ve thought a lot about that night during these past six months.” Louis' first reaction is to think, _yeah? Try to think about it for years,_ before his brain catches up and he realizes what Harry said. “And I think… I think the problem is that even you don’t know anymore how that night went.”

Louis’ brain frizzles.

“What-” Harry’s eyes are big, a little meek. “Of course I know how it went,” he breathes out, feeling mocked.

“We never talked about it, Lou.” Louis doesn’t understand the change of tone: is that pity? Or is Harry as confused and drained as he is? “We went on with our friendship without-”

“Just like you went on, three days later?”

Harry frowns, but doesn’t get irritated. It’s like he knew Louis was going to say that.

“Yeah, that’s exactly what I mean. We never talked about it, and we let too many misunderstandings happen between us. Lou,” he says, seriously, reaching out to him. Louis would love, would _need_ some positive touching and to be reassured that everything will be alright, but he wants to keep clean boundaries. So he doesn’t reach back, and Harry’s hand drops. “I think I know what’s in your mind, but in reality, I have no idea. And for you it’s the same.”

“Wha-” Louis swallows hard and tries again. “Where is the misunderstanding in me telling you… _that_ and you getting together with someone else three days later?” Christ, he can’t even say it. He really doesn’t want to look so stupid again in Harry’s eyes, but it’s still happening.

Harry sighs, biting his lip.

“The misunderstanding is that we were drunk and I had known you for seven months, by that point,” he starts, voice steady. “Lou, fuck, you were basically the only friend I had in uni. And I wanted to kiss you, I wanted that so much,” Louis’ heart skips a bit. He never knew that. “But you shocked me when you told me that, because I hadn’t thought about you like that-”

_Of course. Of course he hadn’t._

“You see?” He interrupts him, bitter. “There are no misunderstandings here.”

“No _fucking_ way there aren’t,” Harry bites out, and he sounds angry again. “Because I left that night, and I kept thinking you said that because of the alcohol. And then you disappeared from the face of the earth for three days, I had no idea where you were-”

“I was trying to give you space,” Louis yells back, riled up again. “I wasn’t _ignoring_ you, I wanted you to think about what I said, and even if I were, so what? In doubt, you go out and fuck someone randomly?”

Harry groans, passing his hands over his face and through his hair. He’s shaking, the tiniest little bit, and Louis wonders if that’s rage or exhaustion.

He raises his head again, and looks him straight in the eyes.

“Listen. I was convinced you were exaggerating.” His voice is sharp, precise, weighing his words, his eyes set. “You never showed any interest in me, or so I thought, and then, out of the blue, during a party, you said that.” He takes a breath in. “Louis, try to see that from my point of view: you told me you loved me while so drunk your eyes were barely open, and then you ignored me for three days. _Then,_ you had no reaction whatsoever to me telling you I fucked that guy, so-”

 _“So?_ So what?” Louis’ voice shakes. “What did you want me to do? Were you wishing I yelled at you? You weren’t interested, it was so fucking obvious, should I have gone all pathetic on you again? I wasn’t gonna make you feel even more embarrassed.”

“Why would that have been pathetic?” Now he’s back at sounding sad, like he knows so much more than him, and maybe this is the tone Louis can’t stand the most. “I just thought you were exaggerating, or you were saying random crap because you were hammered. I started dating that guy, and you didn’t even blink.”

“Are you telling me, after all these years, that you did that to make me have some reaction?” He feels nauseous.

Harry draws out a ragged breath, disbelief and exasperation clear on his face.

“No, I did not, because the world doesn’t revolve around you,” he grumbles. His face is as stormy as the sea, now. “I was nineteen, and I used to like fifteen guys at time, and you were my best friend. Do you realize how confusing it was for me to have my best friend telling me that? Out of nothing?” It’s like he constantly swings between accusing him and feeling sad for him: right now, he’s back being sad, and Louis feels seasick. “Lou, I had no idea how serious it was for you. You didn’t talk about it again, and I… I left it like that.”

Louis nods to the ground, feeling fresh tears pooling in the corners of his eyes. This is too much new information, and he knows Harry is right. It’s hard to compute all of this info, but he recognizes he should’ve been the one pressing the matter, if he really cared as much as he did.

Louis closes his eyes, for a second, to gather his thoughts: he hears Harry’s breath pattern change, and he wonders if his head is spinning as much as his. He opens his eyes, and Harry looks worried.

“Okay,” he starts with. “I get what you’re saying. But… so what?” Harry frowns. “Too much time has passed. What has gone has gone.” He knows he's a coward and he totally feels like one, but he’s tired.

He wants to stay alone for a minute, he wants to stop this discussion, he wants to go home, alone. He has too much new info in his brain, and he doesn’t want to argue anymore. He can’t, on top of everything else, now start banging his head about the _‘what ifs’._ Outside it’s completely dark, and they’ve been crossed with each other for _hours,_ now.

“No, no, wait, what do you mean it’s gone?” Harry rushes to say, moving closer to him, as if Louis would march out of the house again. “What about what is happening now? Didn’t you say _‘don’t make me say it again’_? Lou, please.” He closes the distance between them, and now he’s so near Louis can feel his warmth. For instinct, he leans closer, but his brain catches up before they touch. “Please tell me again.”

Harry is looking at him, and his eyes never looked bigger, clearer. Louis doesn’t know what game he’s playing at, but he won’t fall for it. There’s no use.

“Why, when you still don’t feel the same?”

Harry’s mouth twists in a grimace, his whole body deflating a bit. “You’re so sure of that. Is it because that’s the easier option? Because that’s all you know?”

Louis almost growls.

“No, fuck off.” In what universe is taking for granted that the one you love will never love you back the _easier option?_ What the fuck does Harry have in his brain? He has a thousand reasons to argue back with, but he goes with the newest one: “It’s because, when I asked, you told me we were _just having fun._ That is why.”

Harry blinks, dumbfounded. He doesn’t look put out, though, and he’s quick to fire back:

“What would you have said, if I was the one asking you the same thing?”

His voice is soft, now. Like he had found the core of the problem, and from now on everything will be easier. For some reason, Louis’ ears won’t stop ringing. He’s too scared to believe what Harry is saying.

Because the thing is, he would argue that a question like that wouldn’t be the same, if asked by Harry to him, but he also has to think: why would Harry ask him that? His head is spinning faster than before.

“Don’t make me believe it,” he whispers, leaning on the wall close to Harry.

“I’m not trying to do anything,” Harry is even closer to him now, and he’s smiling for the first time in forever. He’s so warm to look at, for a second Louis forgets he’s terrified. “I'm just trying to tell you, what if this time is real? Lou, please.” A hand finds its place on Louis’ arm, and Louis let it be. “Look at me. Trust me. Please.”

Louis doesn’t look at him but keeps his eyes fixed to his hand, that’s now stroking his arm, softly.

“I- I don’t understand. Since when… you said just now, you didn’t like me back then. So what- when? How?” He stutters out, hating to sound so hesitant.

He finally looks at him, and he’s glad he did: Harry is still smiling, just a little bit, his eyes distant. His whole face is soft, and Louis has to remind himself that this guy right here, in front of him, is his best friend. As terrified as he is to get hurt again, he knows Harry would never do that on purpose. So he should let him talk, maybe, hear what he needs to say, instead of presuming everything he’s about to say or do.

“Lou, you broke my heart a bit more every time you didn’t pick up the phone,” despite his words, Harry’s voice is still gentle. “Or, if you did, every time you said you were too busy to see me. Have you ever had a friend completely turning your back at you? I didn't, until you. I was a fucking mess, and what’s most ironic is that you were the only person who could have comforted me a little. And you keep pushing me away. I thought I was such a wreck because you were, I mean, you _are_ my best friend, but it took me a bit to realize there was more.”

Louis can’t breathe. Harry’s eyes are steady on his, his voice sincere. He knows this is real, but he still can’t breathe. Can’t believe this.

“H-”

“I’m serious. I am. I had to realize there was no way my feelings were only platonic. Not with the way I was hurting. Shit timing to get it, I know.” Suddenly he’s smiling more, with a hint of cheekiness behind his eyes, as if all that pain is so far behind himself, he can now laugh about it. Louis loves him more than anything. “You left me and I found myself without my friend _and_ with feelings for him? It was hell.”

“I’m so sorry. I’m so fucking sorry,” Louis breathes out, dazed. He can’t stop repeating it, it’s like his brain is not getting enough oxygen to compute exactly what is happening.

Harry’s hand moves from his arm, and before Louis can register the cold absence it goes to cup his face, tenderly.

“I am, too. I’m so sorry it had to go like this. But maybe, if it didn’t happen like this, I would have never realized, and we would have never kissed again. You breaking my fucking heart was my wake up call to rethink all our years together, after all.” His face is nearer, blurred in the soft lights of the room, and Louis can only recognize his own beating heart and Harry’s pulse on him. He moves to touch him, too, his hands clumsy with daze and disbelief, and when he slides his arms around Harry’s waist he can barely see how big Harry’s smile is getting. “And you gave me fucking trust issues, but maybe, if you stop looking terrified of me and kiss me again, maybe all these horrible fucking months are gonna be worth something, yeah?”

And Louis kisses him.

He kisses him before thinking, before Harry is done talking, before he can wake up and realize all of this was just in his head. But when Harry kisses him back, with the same desperation and fervor, he dares to think that maybe, just maybe, he doesn’t have anything to wake up from.

It is real, and it becomes even more real when they break away and recognize themselves in the other's eyes, their breath heavy, their hands shaking. Louis opens his arms, and Harry flings himself on his chest, curling up beneath his chin.

He can’t breathe, he can’t sustain them on his legs, and moves to sit on that same old, tattered couch where Harry said they were just having fun. They’re not. By the way they’re shaking and can’t stop squeezing each other, Louis knows there’s no way they’re _‘just’_ doing anything.

Louis pushes Harry off his chest, as gently as possible, and brushes his curls off his face. He needs to see him, to grasp this moment with both hands and never letting it go. He can’t stop touching him, and kisses him again. And again. When they break off again, Harry is beaming, his eyes almost closed for how much he's smiling.

“Is this real?” He feels like he still needs to hear it. He doesn’t sound shaky anymore, just with a short breath and full of hope. His brain keeps pounding against his skull, and in a corner of his mind he’s still too scared to close his eyes and let himself believe this.

“It's real.” Harry’s eyes are wide open and sincere, now. “It's real, Lou, it’s real.”

Harry moves his left arm around his shoulders, his right hand cupping his face, tenderly, like Louis is a precious, precious thing. He presses his mouth on him, gently, and doesn’t let him go for a long time.

Harry smells like sweat, exhaustion and salt. Louis would have never guessed how breathing in that mix would have made him feel like he was home. He hugs him back, and lets himself be led in this dream, never stopping kissing him. It’s not long until his foolish brain finds a reason to stop what he’s doing.

“Wait, what about, that thing with math?” he feels crazy to stop kissing him to ask him this, but he needs to know. Harry only frowns, so he continues: “about not putting things into categories? I thought you meant you wanted to leave this in a friends with benefits kind of thing?”

“Do you want to-”

“No!” Louis rushes to say, maybe too eagerly. He doesn’t care. He finds one of Harry’s hands, and intertwines their fingers. He doesn’t know where the border is between their bodies. They’re curled up around each other, and finally Louis is warm. “I want, uh. I want more. If that’s- if-”

“Of course I want more, too,” he blurts, as quickly as Louis.

A laughter grows into Louis’ chest, and it’s too powerful to quiet it down. He curls on Harry’s shoulder, and laughs. It feels hysteric, almost, but he doesn’t care. So, he’s not the only one who’s desperate about dating, uh. Good to know.

“I said that because I know you always like to know what’s happening, and I wanted you to know that it was alright? Whatever you may have wanted, it was alright for me too? That you didn’t have to go crazy about it. I know you wanted to put it in a category, and I, umh, I was a bit scared about how you would have called it.” Harry’s voice is tentative, and _uh,_ Louis can't believe the words Harry's saying, can't believe what he meant was, _‘I want your happiness more than mine.’_ “Didn’t want to hear you saying, _‘this is a summer fling’_ or summat.”

Louis’ head spins. It still hasn't stopped, he’s drunk on happiness. He caresses Harry’s hand with his thumb, cradling his face with the other.

“If that’s what you meant, then, I want everything." If he sounds greedy, he doesn't care. He wants this, he wants everything so much. 

"I want everything, too," Harry's eyes are shimmering with joy. 

When Louis gets closer to kiss him again, he's not scared he will wake up from a dream, anymore. Not with Harry's body on his, not with his fingers intertwined with his ones like a promise, not when Louis finally knows what he wants.

It’s the same thing as Louis. It always was.

~*~

When they come back to London, Harry, as promised, drives him home. And, as hoped, he kisses him as soon as he finishes parking the car, with the seatbelt still on, to then follow Louis off the car and help him carry his luggage in his flat. 

They start kissing again as soon as the door closes behind them, dropping everything on the floor, their hands everywhere, losing their sweaty travel clothes easily. 

Louis’ new bedroom is bare and sad, but neither of them spares a glance at his blank walls or his mismatched chairs when they drop on the bed, still kissing and laughing in each other’s mouths.

Of course Harry’s lack of commentary doesn’t last forever, and once they come back to reality, he looks around himself, looking amused and dissatisfied. They’re naked and flushed (you never get a pause between heat waves anymore, uh), Louis’ back against the wall, half sitting half sprawled on the unmade bed, with Harry cuddling on his chest. It’s too hot to sit like this, but neither of them cares.

“You… Live like this?” he comments, looking around them.

The walls aren’t even white, they’re off grey, and the room doesn’t offer anything besides their scattered clothes. It’s honestly sad to look at.

“You cheeky little shit,” Louis’ hands find Harry’s ribs easily, and in a second he’s squirming on him, laughing. “I just got the apartment. Fancy some furniture hunting?”

Harry looks up to him, beneath his eyelashes. He’s blissed out, happy. Louis kisses him again before he answers, he can’t help himself.

“I'd love that,” he smiles, and yeah, Louis was sure of that reply. “I'd love anything with you,” he adds, and that was just on the brim between too much honesty and just a hint of teasing. Louis' favorite mix.

“Cheesy, you’re so cheesy,” he laughs in his mouth, and kisses him again. 

They still have to talk about so many things, of course. Like Louis' tendency of putting up walls and dealing with everything by himself, and Harry's almost compulsory need to be reassured, and how they both would rather swallow sand than stopping and communicating like adults, but they'll get there.

Lying on this unmade bed, in this even more unmade, blank room of this empty apartment everything goes back to be calm, peachy again. The air is still and warm here, too, but there's no sea or turtledoves to keep them company: instead, it’s traffic and city noises. But they're still tangled in each other's arms, in this too hot afternoon of late August, and this time around Louis knows there's no need to fret about the future.

They’re together, they have time. They’ll be alright.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading this, I really hope you’ve liked it, I for sure had a lot of fun writing this story!
> 
> If you wanna say hi or anything else, you can find [ my tumblr ](https://chrysopon.tumblr.com/) here, and once you’re there you can give a reblog to the [fic post ](https://chrysopon.tumblr.com/post/631256587411062784/love-moves-like-the-sea) (if you want to!), or check out my [ lmlts tag](https://chrysopon.tumblr.com/tagged/Lmlts), where you can find posts/manips/edits/quotes that reminded me of the aesthetic of this fic.
> 
> Kudos, comments and feedback are always super appreciated, let me know what you think! Thank you again ♡♡♡


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